Preamble

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

MIDDLESEX COUNTY COUNCIL BILL (By Order)

Read a Second time, and committed.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL WAR EFFORT

Factory (Conditions)

Mr. Loverseed: asked the Minister of Labour whether he will conduct an investigation into the conditions of service at a factory, of which he has been informed, and ensure that the local union representatives are consulted at the time of such inquiry.

The Minister of Labour (Mr. Ernest Bevin): I have written to the hon. Member.

Royal Ordnance Factory (Supervisors)

Mr. Daggar: asked the Minister of Labour if, in view of the number of persons holding supervisory posts in Royal Ordnance factories and whose remuneration exceeds £420 per annum, it is proposed to bring them within the scope of the Unemployment Insurance Acts, especially as they anticipate unemployment similar to what was experienced prior to 1939.

Mr. Bevin: I would ask my hon. Friend to await the publication of the Government's proposals about Social Insurance.

Mr. Daggar: asked the Minister of Health whether it is proposed to bring within the scope of the National Insurance Act the number of persons now engaged as temporary supervisors at Royal Ordnance factories whose wages, including bonuses, amounting to more than £420 per annum exclude them from the

benefits of the Act, unless they continue as members of the scheme as voluntary contributors.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Willink): I would refer my hon. Friend to the reply given to him earlier this morning by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour and National Service.

Women (Registration)

Mr. Craik Henderson: asked the Minister of Labour how many women of the 45 to 51 age class have registered; how many have been interviewed; and in how many cases directions have been given.

Mr. Bevin: The number of women born in 1893 to 1898 inclusive, who have registered under the Registration for Employment Order is 1,543,146. Statistics as to interviews are available only for those born in 1893–1896, numbering 999,064, of whom 17,606 had been interviewed up to 22nd January. Local Offices are instructed not to interview women in these age classes unless there is suitable local work for them which they appear likely to be able to undertake. Statistics as to the issue of directions are not available in respect of particular age classes.

Mr. Henderson: Is the right hon. Gentleman now satisfied as a result of his inquiries, that these age groups of women are doing good and useful work?

Mr. Bevin: A very large number have come to the aid of the country by being diverted from what they were doing, to much more useful work.

Work Directions

Mr. Rhys Davies: asked the Minister of Labour the number of directions issued to workpeople by his Department since the outbreak of war; and how many so directed found that their labour was not required on arrival.

Mr. Bevin: As regards the first part of the Question, I am having the information extracted and will write to my hon. Friend. As regards the second part, a few cases have occurred for various reasons but the number is negligible.

Unemployment

Sir Leonard Lyle: asked the Minister of Labour whether, in view of the increase


by 4,421 in the number of wholly unemployed to 76,674 in January, he can state the forms of industry in which this number of workers are normally engaged; and to what is attributed their present failure to obtain work.

Mr. Bevin: This increase as compared with October was almost entirely attributable to seasonal unemployment among women in agricultural occupations and to the temporary inclusion on the register of boys and girls who left school in December.

Directed Workpeople (Travelling Expenses)

Mr. Foster: asked the Minister of Labour if he will consider the granting of an allowance to cover travelling expenses to workpeople who have been directed to employment long distances from home, up to the maximum lodging allowance, in those cases where no agreement exists between the workpeople and employer for travelling allowance.

Mr. Bevin: No, Sir. The payment of allowances to cover travelling expenses is in general a matter to be negotiated within the industry concerned.

Mr. Foster: Is my right hon. Friend aware of a case which I have sent to his Department where a workman directed to other employment has to meet travelling expenses amounting to about £39 a year?

Mr. Bevin: If it is within daily travelling distance the union and the employer ought to negotiate and settle the matter. I cannot undertake to deal with it under the general allowance scheme.

Sir Herbert Williams: Surely if my right hon. Friend directs people to work which involves heavy travelling expenses, it is not fair that he should throw the responsibility on the organised bodies of employers and workpeople?

Mr. Bevin: No, that does not arise. If the hon. Gentleman had looked at the Question, he would not have asked that supplementary question.

Sir H. Williams: I have looked at the Question. Will the right hon. Gentleman answer my supplementary question?

Mr. Bevin: It does not arise out of the Question at all.

Oral Answers to Questions — INDIA

Agricultural Land (Mortgages)

Mr. Astor: asked the Secretary of State for India what restrictions on the mortgage of agricultural land are in existtence in India; and whether he can give any details as to the principles on which they are based and the methods by which they are enforced.

The President of the Board of Education (Mr. Butler): I have been asked to reply. A full statement of the position, which varies greatly in different parts of India, is contained in Chapter XII of the Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture in India (Cmd. 3132 of 1928). There is some more up-to-date information in Chapter VII of the Report of the Land Revenue Commission Bengal, 1940, of which a copy is in the Library of the House. Existing legislation is generally directed either to ensure that possession by the mortgagee for a limited number of years suffices to clear the mortgage or to prevent alienation of land by agricultural classes to non-agriculturists.

Mrs. Naidu (Restrictions)

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for India, if he is aware that the restrictions imposed on Mrs. Naidu, respecting freedom of speech, have been widely condemned in India, including the Moslem League; that the speech she had made before the restrictions were imposed was politically helpful; and whether the existing restrictions can now be withdrawn.

Mr. Butler: Mrs. Naidu, a member of the Working Committee of the Congress Party, was released from detention last March because of ill health. I am unable to accept the interpretation which the hon. Member places on the two statements to the Press which she made in January. Since Government could not permit her a liberty of speech denied to the other members of the Working Committee, she was served with an order prohibiting her from addressing meetings or making communications to the Press. The answer to the last part of the Question is in the negative.

Mr. Sorensen: Is the right hon. Gentleman not aware that practically every party in India condemns this rather absurd restriction? In view of the fact that


the speech was accorded very favourable notice, could not this decision be reconsidered?

Mr. Butler: I must adhere to the terms of my answer.

Viceroy's Speech

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for India whether the recent speech by the Viceroy signifies a fresh attempt to resolve the present deadlock; if, in view of the appeal for co-operation facilities will now be afforded to non-Congress representatives to meet imprisoned or detained Congress leaders; and if it is proposed to arrange for the formation of an authoritative body of Indians to make the preliminary examination of constitutional problems.

Mr. Butler: I trust that the hon. Member will have found in the Viceroy's speech convincing evidence of his desire to further to the fullest possible extent the policy for India to which His Majesty's Government are committed. The speech is self-explanatory and I am not prepared to add anything further at this stage.

Mr. Sorensen: Can the House have an opportunity at an early date of discussing the speech?

Mr. Butler: I am glad the hon. Member attaches importance to this excellent speech of the Viceroy. It is not for me to decide the Business of the House. I suggest that he should discuss that matter with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

Sir H. Williams: Can my right hon. Friend tell us why the most exclusive aristocracy in the world, the Hindu Brahmins, always seek support from Socialists in this country?

Habeas Corpus Petitions

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Secretary of State for India what action is proposed to be taken to prevent executive officials in India from interfering with the course of justice by destroying petitions of habeas corpus submitted from prison, as in the instance of a Bombay barrister, Mr. Pardiwalla; and by arresting in the precincts of the court lawyers engaged for the defence in political cases.

Mr. Butler: I have seen a Press report of the matters referred to, but am unable

to comment in the absence of fuller official information, for which I have telegraphed. Upon its receipt, I will communicate further with the hon. Member.

Oral Answers to Questions — CIVIL DEFENCE

Premises (Health Conditions)

Mr. Craik Henderson: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he has had an inspection, from a health point of view, of report and control centres, and wardens' posts, throughout the country; and whether such report is satisfactory from the point of view of accommodation and ventilation.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. Herbert Morrison): No, Sir. The primary responsibility for conditions in report and control centres and wardens' posts rests with the local authorities concerned whose Medical Officers are in a position to advise them on health matters. The need for close attention to the problem was brought to the notice of local authorities in a circular which I issued in June, 1942, in consultation with my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Minister of Health. I will send my hon. Friend a copy. In addition, Civil Defence premises are visited and reported upon from time to time by officers of my Department.

Mr. Henderson: In view of the complaints that many Members have received, will the right hon. Gentleman again communicate with local authorities and impress on them the necessity of having regard to health conditions?

Mr. Morrison: I am willing to consider any evidence that may be supplied to me, as to anything being generally unsatisfactory, but I do not think I ought to commit myself in the absence of evidence.

Mr. Robertson: Having regard to the knowledge of the subject which the right hon. Gentleman possesses, and the unsatisfactory conditions at Streatham where men and women have to work for 12 hours a day in cubby holes without windows, is it not a matter for his Department?

Mr. Morrison: No, the hon. Member drew my attention to this and I did the best I could. Local authorities have this


responsibility and they have medical officers. If I sent inspectors to all these places half the country would be inspecting the other half.

Wardens (Hours of Duty)

Mr. Driberģ: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if the period during which an air-raid warden is standing by for duty in case of an alert, when he is unable to do any work or leave home, counts towards the 48 hours' duty required each month.

Mr. H. Morrison: I assume that the hon. Member is referring to the "on call" hours during which a warden may be required to turn out for duty when there is an "alert." These hours do not count towards the maximum of 48 hours rota duty at a post every four weeks; but in most cases they enable that duty to be substantially reduced. The requirement should not prevent a warden working or leaving home while he is on call so long as he can attend at his post without undue delay.

Mr. Driberģ: Could the right hon. Gentleman have copies of his answer circulated, because there have been misunderstandings and disputes about this in some districts?

Mr. Morrison: If the hon. Gentleman will tell me the districts I will see that the facts are communicated to them.

Débris Clearance, London

Mr. Astor: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he will arrange for an increased number of bulldozers being made available in London to remove débris from streets after an air-raid.

Mr. H. Morrison: I am satisfied that, so far as circumstances can be foreseen, the existing arrangements for securing bulldozers when they are required and suitable to the circumstances of a particular area or incident are adequate.

Mr. Astor: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that recently streets were being cleaned and débris was being removed by hand, when the work could have been far more quickly and efficiently done by mechanical means? Is he satisfied with that situation?

Mr. Morrison: No, I am never satisfied. We are short of man-power and I quite

agree that this is an idea, although I imagine that there will be difficulty in getting the bulldozers. However, I will do my best.

Mr. Astor: Will the right hon. Gentleman make arrangements with the War Office to obtain bulldozers, which can be moved very quickly from one area to another?

Mr. Morrison: I will use the hon. Gentleman's Question to exercise pressure on the War Office.

Mr. Thorne: Can my right hon. Friend say what is meant by a bulldozer?

Mr. Morrison: Yes, Sir. It is a mechanical navvy.

Oral Answers to Questions — FIRE SERVICES (EMERGENCY PROVISIONS) ORDER

Sir H. Williams: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he will state the meaning and purpose of the Fire Services (Emergency Provisions) Order (S.R. & O., No. 141, of 1944); and why the Order did not include an explanatory memorandum.

Mr. H. Morrison: The Regulation to which my hon. Friend refers abolished one of the existing fire areas in the London Civil Defence Region, authorised the Secretary of State to transfer such parts of that fire area to two other fire areas as he may determine, and made certain consequential and transitional arrangements for disciplinary proceedings, etc., during the transitional period. As the effect of the Regulation seemed readily ascertainable on the face of it, I did not think an explanatory memorandum was necessary.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRISONERS (FLOGGING)

Commander Locker-Lampson: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is aware of the repulsion felt by those required to watch the flogging of prisoners; and if he will now relieve doctors from undertaking this duty and consider the abolition of flogging.

Mr. H. Morrison: As long as the law authorises corporal punishment, it is essential, in the interests of the prisoner himself, that the flogging should be supervised by the prison medical officers, and


I am not prepared to amend the statutory provisions in the respect suggested by my hon. and gallant Friend.

Commander Locker-Lampson: Should not medical officers be doing better work than this?

Mr. Morrison: I do not think I had better enter into the pros and cons of this matter by way of question and answer. It is highly disputable.

Mr. Sorensen: What action does my right hon. Friend propose to take in regard to the recommendations of the Committee which considered the whole question of flogging?

Mr. Morrison: My recollection is that the report came before Parliament and that Parliament took its decision.

Mr. Astor: Has the right hon. Gentleman abandoned or does he intend to resurrect the Criminal Justice Bill of his predecessor, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Chelsea (Sir S. Hoare), which dealt with this matter?

Oral Answers to Questions — RECTOR, LEWES (PETITION)

Mr. Purbrick: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether, in view of the statements and actions of Kenneth Rawlings, rector of St. Michael's Parish Church, Lewes, which are contrary to the definite war policy laid down and being carried out by the Government and are subversive of our war effort, he will intern Rawlings under Regulation 18B.

Mr. H. Morrison: I have no reason to think that this individual falls within any of the categories of persons whom I am empowered by the Regulation to detain, or that, even if he did so fall, it would be necessary to exercise control over him. Opposition to the policy of the Government is, of course, not in itself a ground for detention.

Mr. Purbrick: In view of the fact that more than half the signatories to the petition of this reverend gentleman are conscientious objectors, will the Minister take steps to see that they are scrutinised from the point of view of subversive action?

Mr. Morrison: I cannot see any need for that. What this gentleman has done

has been to ask people to agree with a speech made by the Bishop of Chichester in another place. I cannot see that that is an action which warrants my attention. After all, somebody must uphold the liberty of the subject, if it is only the Home Secretary.

Mr. Driberģ: Is it not the case that this particular clergyman is a perfectly sincere pacifist of the old-fashioned sort, and that he is in no way tainted by Fascism or anything like that?

Mr. Morrison: I understand that that is so.

Oral Answers to Questions — BY-ELECTION, WEST DERBYSHIRE

Major Stourton: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if his attention has been drawn to the active intervention in the West Derbyshire by-election of a lady of Russian nationality; and if he will take steps to prohibit such activities on the part of individuals other than British subjects.

Mr. H. Morrison: My information is that the lady in question is a British subject, having acquired British nationality by marriage:

Major Petherick: When did this lady acquire British nationality?

Mr. Morrison: I have not the least idea.

Major. Petherick: Then will the right hon. Gentleman find out?

Mr. Morrison: It does not matter at all. This lady is a British subject, and even if she were not, I am not quite sure that I can control her actions.

Mr. Shinwell: If this lady had intervened on behalf of the other candidate, would the hon. and gallant Gentleman have asked the Question?

Oral Answers to Questions — ALIENS (MOVEMENT RESTRICTION) ORDER

Mr. Hubert Beaumont: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he is now in a position to make any statement in regard to the removal of the movement restrictions which at present exclude many aliens from fireguard duties.

Mr. H. Morrison: I have now made an Order amending the Aliens (Movement Restriction) Order, 1940. Under this amending Order those foreigners who have since 1940 been subject to curfew restrictions will be relieved of the restrictions as from 6th March, 1944. This will largely increase the number of foreigners liable for fire guard duties. As regards the possession of bicycles and other vehicles permission has already been granted to a large number of individuals and the exemption from the prohibition of possession will now be made general instead of particular. Aliens who are subject to the special restrictions imposed on aliens of enemy nationality, and certain other aliens who are subject to individual restriction orders, will not be affected under the new Order. In Aliens' Protected Areas the existing restrictions will continue to apply and a new Order consolidating some of those restrictions has been made.

Mr. Beaumont: While thanking my right hon. Friend for this announcement and these concessions, which will be appreciated and warmly welcomed by a large number of aliens in this country who desire to render service to the cause of the Allied nations, will he consider extending the provisions to cover all aliens who have been, or who may be, accepted in the Civil Defence, Ambulance, First Aid and National Fire Services and the Home Guard?

Mr. Morrison: I cannot answer for the Home Guard; I can answer only for the Civil Defence Services, and I will certainly give the matter consideration. My hon. Friend will appreciate that I must have the right to say that certain aliens must be subject to special restrictions and that I cannot apply this to the aliens in restricted areas in the existing situation.

Mr. Mathers: Will my right hon. Friend make it clear that this Order applies to Scotland?

Mr. Morrison: I think it does.

Mr. Buchanan: It does.

Oral Answers to Questions — DOUBLE SUMMER TIME

Sir Leonard Lyle: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether he can now state the decision of the Government on the question of double summer time for this year.

Mr. H. Morrison: The Government have decided to make no change in the existing Defence (Summer Time) Regulations which have been in operation in 1942 and 1943. These Regulations provide that double summer time shall run from the night following the first Saturday in April to the night following the second Saturday in August. Accordingly, the period this year will be from Sunday, the 2nd April, to Sunday, the 13th August. There are, of course, many arguments on both sides, but in reaching this decision, the Government have been influenced by the advantages of double summer time in accelerating production and transport and in saving fuel, as proved in the last three years. The Government feel that it is impossible to forgo these advantages in this crucial year. Indeed, but for agricultural considerations, which the Government has had very much in mind, there would have been a case for extending the period of double summer time to a later date than the middle of August.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Assheton Pownall: As we have already advanced the clock two hours in a relatively few years, how long will it be before we advance it a further 10 hours, so that all our watches will point out the right time?

Oral Answers to Questions — SERVICE UNIFORMS (UNAUTHORISED WEARING)

Sir Charles Edwards: asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department if he has any figures of how many men and women in this country have been discovered to be wearing Service uniforms to which they have no claim by service of any kind, or to have assumed the titles of military ranks without any claim to such distinction.

Mr. H. Morrison: No figures of this kind are available, but my information is that this conduct is not so prevalent as to cause any special concern to the Service or police authorities.

Oral Answers to Questions — EDUCATION

Deaf and Dumb Children

Mr. Collindridge: asked the President of the Board of Education if he can give the assurance that children at schools for the deaf and dumb will be granted


facilities for educational improvement under the new Bill upon a standard equal to the conditions granted to other children.

Mr. Butler: Yes, Sir. The Bill is designed to secure for the deaf no less than for hearing children such forms of education as may be suitable to their differing ages, abilities and aptitudes.

Mr. David Grenfell: May I ask my right hon. Friend whether the age limit for the deaf will be 15 or more?

Mr. Butler: The age limit for the deaf is already 16.

Schools (Curriculum)

Captain Pluģģe: asked the President of the Board of Education whether the House will be given an opportunity of considering the outlines of the curriculum to be presented for general use in the schools.

Mr. Butler: It has not been, and I do not propose that it should be, the Board's practice to prescribe a curriculum for general use in the schools. The local education authority or governors, as the case may be, are responsible for the curriculum of the schools under their control, subject to compliance with such provisions of the Board's regulations as deal with the subjects to be taught.

Mr. Edmund Harvey: Is it not most desirable that there should not be any one curriculum imposed on all schools?

Mr. Butler: I have always said that we should have diversity in our educational system.

Mr. Shinwell: Surely it is also desirable that the Board should have some views on the nature of the curriculum to be provided in our schools? In view of the fact that we are discussing the machinery of education and very little about its content, is it not desirable that the Board should express their views?

Mr. Butler: The Board have published a volume entitled "Suggestions for Teachers," which has proved to be very useful in various schools in the country. It has also been the Board's practice to have panels of inspectors studying individual subjects in order to give advice and I feel sure that the Board and the new advisory councils will give all the advice they can with a view to improving the curriculum in the future.

Mr. George Griffiths: Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman who asked the Question want to stop local education authorities from having a voice in the preparation of the curriculum?

Teachers (Release from Forces)

Captain Pluģģe: asked the Secretary of State for War what facilities are to be given for teachers now in the Service, but above active combatant age, to be liberated for the purpose of the Bill providing for educational development.

The Financial Secretary to the War Office (Mr. Arthur Henderson): The question of the special release of particular classes will fall to be considered under the general conditions of whatever demobilisation scheme is approved. I am not in a position to say whether any special treatment will be accorded to teachers.

Oral Answers to Questions — PUBLIC HEALTH

Mental Hospitals (Tuberculosis Rate)

Mr. J. Henderson: asked the Minister of Health whether, with a view to reducing the high death rate from tuberculosis in mental hospitals, he will consider the desirability of securing high priority for building work in connection with mental hospitals; ameliorating the conditions in them so far as the war permits; to secure better ventilation, more and better food, etc.; and ensuring as far as possible that mental hospitals taken over for war purposes shall be released to enable the appropriate authorities to deal with overcrowding.

Mr. Willink: I regret that it is quite impracticable under present conditions to give priority to the construction of new accommodation at mental hospitals. It is also impracticable to release during the war the accommodation which has been taken over for the emergency hospitals scheme or for the use of the Forces. I can assure my hon. Friend, however, that the general conditions in mental hospitals, including ventilation and dietaries, are kept constantly under review in the interests of the health of the patients.

Mr. Henderson: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that at a meeting recently in Manchester disquiet was expressed at the fairly high rise in mortality


rates among the persons indicated in the Question, and cannot the Minister do something to ease it?

Mr. Willink: I was not aware of this particular meeting, but I can tell my hon. Friend that the death rate in these hospitals, though it rose at the beginning of the war, has fallen considerably.

Mr. Henderson: Is it not a fact that from 1939 to 1942 there was almost a 100 per cent. increase?

Mr. Willink: I have not the figures for that period with me but I can tell my hon. Friend that the figures have fallen and that we are hoping for a considerable fall in the tuberculosis rate.

Mr. Rhys Davies: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman give attention to the serious problem that arises in some of these hospitals owing to some sections having to be closed because they cannot get staff?

Cement Dust, Kent

Sir Irving Albery: asked the Minister of Health if he has considered the representations from local authorities on Thamesside, in Kent, concerning an increase in the nuisance caused by cement dust; and if he will state the result of any inquiries which he has made.

Mr. Willink: Yes, Sir. Conditions are kept under review. Cement is essential for war purposes, but every effort is being made in consultation with the manufacturers to minimise cause for complaint.

Sir I. Albery: Do I understand that the right hon. and learned Gentleman has assured himself that the usual means taken to abate this nuisance are still active?

Mr. Willink: Perhaps my hon. Friend will bring any special case to my notice.

Mrs. Adamson: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that I have been raising this matter with his Department for the past five years and that my constituents are getting very tired of the present state of things? Has he considered the medical evidence I have submitted to his Department about the harmful effects on the health of the people in my locality?

Mr. Willink: The hon. Lady will hardly expect me, in reply to a supplementary question, to deal with matters that have taken place in my Department during the past five years.

Inland Water Survey

Mr Molson: asked the Minister of Health whether, in view of the need for accurate information regarding water resources, he will arrange for the immediate resumption of the work of the inland water survey which has been suspended owing to the war.

Mr. Willink: The work of the Inland Water Survey consists of collecting, collating and publishing records of measurements of the flow of rivers and, in conjunction with the Geological Survey, corresponding information concerning underground water. I regret that a general resumption of this long-term task is not practicable at the present time, since the central and local personnel concerned are for the most part otherwise engaged on work closely associated with our immediate war effort. I share my hon. Friend's view of the importance of resuming this work as soon as practicable, and indeed this is one of the matters which has been under close consideration in connection with water policy generally. Meanwhile, much useful further information on underground water has been secured by the Geological Survey arising out of direct war needs, and this and other information will be available when the time comes for a resumption of the work of the Inland Water Survey as a whole on, I hope, a larger scale.

Mr. Molson: Does not my right hon. Friend realise how difficult it will be to prepare a national water plan unless the data are available, and that any prolonged interruption of the collection of data greatly reduces the value of the information?

Mr. Willink: A good many valuable activities are interrupted at the moment.

Sir William Davison: Would it not be possible to publish a preliminary report?

Mr. Bossom: Could not the information be published as soon as possible, because housing authorities would find it valuable?

Mr. Willink: I will consider whether the partial information would be of value to them.

Oral Answers to Questions — FINSBURY BOROUGH COUNCIL (ADMINISTRATION)

Sir H. Williams: asked the Minister of Health whether, having regard to the statements made on the occasion of the nearing before the National Arbitration Tribunal of the application for reinstatement by the former deputy town clerk of Finsbury, he is prepared to cause an inquiry to be made into the administration of the borough of Finsbury.

Mr. Willink: The statements on both sides made before the tribunal have been brought to my attention but do not, on the face of them, appear to afford ground on which I am empowered to direct an inquiry under the powers which are available to me. I may, however, inform my hon. Friend that an extraordinary audit of the borough council's accounts is now in progress, and statements have been made publicly before the auditor which appear to cover some of the same ground as those to which my hon. Friend refers. When the auditor's decision is given there is a statutory right of appeal either to me or to the High Court and I should wish to await the outcome of any such proceedings and the consideration by the council of the statutory report which the auditor is required to make before coming to a decision on my hon. Friend's suggestion.

Sir H. Williams: Having regard to the fact that the mayor dismissed the deputy town clerk, because the deputy town clerk refused to requisition a building which was involving the mayor in some financial embarrassment, is there not a prima facie case for an investigation?

Mr. Willink: No, Sir. I think not.

Oral Answers to Questions — HOUSING

Workers' Hostels

Mr. D. Grenfell: asked the Minister of Health whether he is proposing to encourage the establishment of municipal hostels in large centres of population so that accommodation for homeless workers may be made available at reasonable charges.

Mr. Willink: No, Sir. My right hon. Friends the Ministers of Labour and National Service, Supply and Aircraft Production have, in collaboration, provided

hostels for transferred war workers in certain areas where need on this account has been established during the war. Provision was made before the war by a number of local authorities under their housing powers and the need for further provision of this kind will be taken into account in the consideration of post-war housing needs generally.

Mr. Grenfell: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman cause inquiries to be made into the extent of the preparations which have been made for dealing with this problem immediately the war ends?

Mr. Willink: Certainly, Sir.

Oral Answers to Questions — CAMP SITE, WELSH COAST

Mr. James Griffiths: asked the Minister of Health whether his Department and the local authorities concerned were Consulted about the site of Butlin's camp built on the Welsh coast; and if he has given his approval of the siting of this camp.

Mr. Willink: So far as my Department is concerned, the answer to both parts of the Question is "No, Sir." I have no information whether any of the local authorities concerned were consulted in this matter.

Mr. Griffiths: Is my right hon. and learned Friend aware that another Government Department made arrangements for building this camp temporarily, as a war measure, and have now agreed that the person who built it shall have it handed over to him at the end of the war? Was that done with the consent of my right hon. Friend, or of the Welsh Board of Health, or of any of the local authorities?

Mr. Willink: Perhaps my hon. Friend will put the first part of his question to the other Department concerned. I have given him all the information I can.

Mr. Griffiths: I gather, then, that this was done without any consultation with the local authorities or the Ministry of Health?

Mr. Willink: I have not said that. I said that it was done without any consultation with my Department. I have no information whether the local authorities were consulted.

Mr. D. Grenfell: Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman consider the advisability of taking part in the organisation of recreations and the maintenance of decent holiday facilities for people who need quietude and rest?

Mr. Willink: That is a different and much wider question.

Sir H. Williams: Was not this matter dealt with at the request of the Admiralty?

Mr. Willink: I am afraid that I cannot tell my hon. Friend.

Mr. Graham White: In view of the great developments which will follow on the institution of holidays-with-pay, will my right hon. and learned Friend see that, so far as it concerns him, no isolated action is taken until public policy has been decided?

Mr. Willink: A matter of this kind does not concern me until further stages have been gone through.

Mr. J. Griffiths: In view of the importance of this matter, I wish to give notice that I intend to raise it on the Adjournment, at the earliest opportunity.

Oral Answers to Questions — TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING

Mr. Bossom: asked the Minister of Town and Country Planning whether he can give an assurance that local authorities, who have acquired or have entered into commitments for the acquisition or use of lands for the erection of either temporary or permanent houses or other urgent public works, will not be financially prejudiced under any legislation which may be promoted by His Majesty's Government with regard to the acquisition of land for public purposes.

The Minister of Town and Country Planning (Mr. W. S. Morrison): It will be for Parliament to decide what provisions should apply to land owned by local authorities under legislation for the acquisition of land for public purposes; but I shall, in accordance with promises already given to them, consult local authorities regarding any legislative proposals affecting them.

Mr. Bossom: Cannot my right hon. Friend make it perfectly clear that in

any financial facilities likely to be made available to towns those which are enterprising and go-ahead are not penalised?

Mr. Morrison: The matter is not so simple as that. It is a complicated question and can best be discussed when the Bill is before the House.

Mr. Bossom: Will my right hon. Friend, then, advise towns not to go ahead?

Mr. Morrison: No, Sir.

Mr. J. Griffiths: Was the right hon. Gentleman's Department consulted on the case about which I have asked the Minister of Health a Question?

Mr. Morrison: I should like notice of that.

Oral Answers to Questions — ARTIFICIAL LIMBS

Mr. Oldfield: asked the Minister of Pensions the number of amputation cases repatriated from Germany, in October last, and the number who have now been satisfactorily fitted with artificial limbs.

The Minister of Pensions (Sir Walter Womersley): 407 amputation cases, including a few members of the American and Canadian Forces who were being repatriated to their own countries, were sent to the United Kingdom from Germany in October last. Artificial limbs have been ordered for all British cases ready for the fitting of limbs, but I regret that precise figures of those completed to date are not available.

Mr. Rhys Davies: Is it not a fact that some of these poor fellows were provided with artificial limbs in Germany?

Sir W. Womersley: Yes, Sir, but not of anything like the quality that we desire our men to wear.

Mr. Oldfield: asked the Minister of Pensions the time taken to effect delivery of artificial limbs from dates of measurements, in 1939 and in 1944; and will he take steps to ensure that adequate labour and materials are available to prevent undue delays.

Sir W. Womersley: The time taken to effect delivery varies considerably according to the nature of the limb. It is difficult, therefore, to give any precise information, but it is the case that the time of delivery generally is longer than before


the war. The present position is causing me some concern and discussions have taken place with my contractors who are making serious efforts to improve the position. There is, however, some shortage of skilled labour and I am considering with my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour and National Service what can be done to make available to those contractors additional skilled workers.

Mr. Oldfield: Is it not a fact that it used to take from six to eight weeks, and that it is now taking from 16 to 18 weeks?

Sir W. Womersley: No, Sir. I would not agree to the latter figure. We are doing everything we possibly can, but the shortage of skilled labour is a serious matter. I hope to overcome that difficulty very shortly.

Mr. Oldfield: asked the Minister of Pensions if he will provide similar accommodation and facilities at limb fitting centres in the provinces to those considered necessary at Roehampton, which are not available to the majority of amputation cases.

Sir W. Womersley: Roehampton, which is the Headquarters of the Ministry's Limb Service, deals with rather more than one-third of the total number of amputation cases and it follows that the accommodation there must be on a larger scale than in provincial limb centres. Subject to this the service in the provinces is comparable with that at Roehampton and, as I informed the hon. Member in reply to a question on 20th January, I keep constantly in mind the need for providing suitable and adequate accommodation in all limb centres.

Oral Answers to Questions — ARMED FORCES (PENSIONS AND GRANTS)

Lieut.-Colonel Sir Ian Fraser: asked the Minister of Pensions how many entitlement claims, previously rejected, have been reconsidered to date as a result of the provisions of the recent White Paper; how many of these have been admitted to pension; how many have been rejected; and how many are still under consideration, respectively.

Sir W. Womersley: Up to 12th February last, the number of entitlement claims, previously rejected, which have been reopened under the terms of the recent

White Paper is about 29,000. Of these, somewhat more than 7,500 have been admitted to pension, about 20,000 have been rejected and approximately 1,350 are still under consideration.

Sir I. Fraser: Can my right hon. Friend tell the House how it comes about that some of these cases which have been allowed a pension get their arrears back to the time when disability occurred, while others only get the arrears back to the Royal Warrant?

Sir W. Womersley: Those who get the arrears back to their claim for pension were the cases where it was found that there had been material aggravation. Those who get their pensions dated back to the date when the House approved the new Regulations are those whose cases are merely aggravated. Therefore they only come under the new Regulations.

Sir I. Fraser: asked the Minister of Pensions how many claims to economic supplementation of pension have been made to date as a result of the provisions of the recent White Paper; how many of these have been granted; how many have been rejected; how many have lapsed; and how many are under consideration, respectively.

Sir W. Womersley: Rather more than 8,200 applications have been received, of which about 4,350 have been found to satisfy the necessary requirements, approximately 2,700 have been unsuccessful and 300 have lapsed. About 900 cases are still under consideration.

Sir H. Williams: asked the Minister of Pensions whether he is prepared to review the decision in respect of the application for a gratuity made by the widow of the late Commander E. D. Michell, D.S.O., R.N., who was killed at Tripoli on 14th March, 1943, through the explosion of a grouting machine in circumstances of which he has been informed.

Sir W. Womersley: As death in this case was due to an accidental explosion in a military workshop, I regret that I am unable to add to the normal pension and allowances the special gratuity which is granted to the widow of an officer who is killed in action or while on flying duties.

Sir H. Williams: As this man was engaged in work connected with the war, in a place which was a scene of military


operations, surely the widow is entitled to a gratuity just as much as if her husband had been killed in action?

Sir W. Womersley: No, Sir. There is a lot of misunderstanding about this gratuity. The old traditional institution granted it many years ago to the widows of men actually killed fighting in action. It was considered by a committee presided over by Mr. Baldwin in 1922, which recommended that, because of the tradition, it should be continued. But as it created an enormous number of anomalies—indeed the very great one that it did not apply to the rank and file—it was decided by the Government of that day that it should not be extended. That is the law at the present moment, and I can only carry out that law.

Oral Answers to Questions — CARTELS AND MONOPOLIES

Mr. Ellis Smith: asked the Prime Minister if he will have a public inquiry made into the growth and effects of monopoly development, cartel and trade arrangements; the arrangements made by the I.G. German combine in this country before the war; the arrangements made for the agencies of I.G. to continue business in the British Empire during the war, with a view of steps being taken to safeguard the national interests in the future?

The Deputy Prime Minister (Mr. Attlee): No public inquiry will be made; but the subject is being carefully studied by the Departments concerned.

Mr. Smith: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Prime Minister stated in America that he had always been against monopolies? In view of the increasing evidence which is being produced in all parts of the world, and in view of the evidence contained in the recent publication "Germany's Master Plan," may I ask when the Government are going to take active steps to allay the suspicion which prevails in regard to monopoly development?

Mr. Attlee: I do not know about the suspicion. The matter is under active consideration.

Mr. Shinwell: Has my right hon. Friend seen the report of a speech by Mr. Biddle, the United States Attorney-General, on the effect of cartels on the British war effort and in America; and will he take

steps to see that monopolies are not permitted to interfere either with the British ar effort, or with reconstruction when the war is over?

Mr. Attlee: I have not seen that speech yet.

Mr. Smith: Does the right hon Gentleman consider that it is a satisfactory method of dealing with the problem to leave it to different Government Departments? Is not this matter so important that there should be a Cabinet decision and a direction given to the Government Departments?

Mr. Attlee: In due course.

Sir Percy Harris: Does not the Deputy Prime Minister realise that there is great public concern, and can he give us an assurance that, if he cannot set up a special committee, the Cabinet itself is studying the matter and will report in due course?

Mr. Attlee: The matter is being considered by Ministers, in connection with the general question of post-war economy.

Mr. Shinwell: When the right hon. Gentleman, speaks of "the Government," to which Department, dealing with this matter, does he refer?

Mr. Attlee: The matter is primarily one for the Board of Trade.

Mr. Ellis Smith: Will the right hon. Gentleman consult the Prime Minister, with a view to reconsidering policy in connection with this matter?

Mr. De la Bère: Will the Deputy Prime Minister bear in mind that it is not a question of "due course," but of the right course?

Oral Answers to Questions — MEMBER OF PARLIAMENT (ABSENCE IN AUSTRALIA)

Mr. Rhys Davies: asked the Prime Minister whether he has considered the protest sent to him by the Rawtenstall Town Council against the continued absence of their Member of Parliament in Australia, the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Cross); and what reply has been tendered.

Mr. Attlee: My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has seen the letter from the town council and has had an acknowledgment


sent to it. On the general question, there is nothing to add to what was said on behalf of the Government in the recent Debates. The particular issue is obviously one between a Member and his constituents.

Mr. Rhys Davies: May we take it that all that the Rawtenstall Town Council received was an acknowledgment of their letter? Would it be too much to ask the Prime Minister to send them a copy of the OFFICIAL REPORT SO that they can read the Debate on this issue?

Oral Answers to Questions — PENICILLIN (DISCOVERER, RECOMPENSE)

Sir W. Davison: asked the Lord President of the Council whether he is aware that Professor Fleming has made no financial profit from his discovery of penicillin, the new drug which has saved the lives of thousands of our soldiers; and whether a grant will be made from public funds to the author of this discovery.

Mr. Attlee: I am aware of the circumstances, and also of the fact that others have played an important part in showing the full value of Professor Fleming's original observation and in developing it as a discovery capable of practical application. The question of financial rewards for medical discoveries has been carefully examined on earlier occasions, with the conclusion that any such system, even if desirable, could not be administered equitably in practice. The policy of His Majesty's Government is to support medical research work in progress, and not to offer payments on the basis of results.

Sir W. Davison: Is the Minister aware that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply recently stated in this House that the discovery of penicillin was as vital to the Allies as the most secret weapon we were producing? Is it not a curious thing that we should give grants to people who produce lethal weapons, but refuse them to the inventors of a drug which has saved thousands of lives?

Mr. Attlee: I have given my hon. Friend the line which has always been taken by the Government in this particular matter, and I think he will realise the difficulty of attributing to one individual a result which may have come from the researches of many people.

Mr. Lipson: Do the Government propose to increase their grants for medical research?

Commander Locker-Lampson: asked the Minister of Supply whether penicillin is a proprietary article; whether the discoverers have been recompensed and will be pensioned; and whether he will undertake that this drug shall not be commercialised but only manufactured under Government auspices.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Supply (Mr. Peat): Penicillin is not a proprietary article. It is at present being manufactured only under Government auspices and manufacture will be controlled so long as that is necessary in the national interest. As regards the discoverers, I would refer to the reply of my right hon. Friend the Lord President of the Council to the hon. Member for South Kensington (Sir W. Davison) to-day.

Commander Locker-Lampson: If the discoverer is not pensioned as he really should be, should not the hospital where the discovery was made benefit, and not the commercial interests?

Mr. Peat: I do not think that is for me to answer.

Oral Answers to Questions — MASCOT DOGS (QUARANTINE)

Mr. R. C. Morrison: asked the Minister of Agriculture why dogs brought to this country by U.S.A. air-crews as mascots are ordered to be destroyed in cases where the airmen are willing to meet the expense of keeping them in quarantine.

The Minister of Agriculture (Mr. R. S. Hudson): No instruction has been issued by my Department requiring imported dogs, which their owners are prepared to place in quarantine, to be destroyed, and, as far as I have been able to ascertain, no such Order has been issued by any other authority.

Mr. Morrison: Has the right hon. Gentleman seen the reports signed by the whole of the crew of a Flying Fortress that they offered to pay for the cost of keeping their mascot dog in quarantine but it was destroyed, although a dog belonging to another Flying Fortress crew was spared on the personal intervention of President Roosevelt? Can he give some explanation?

Mr. Hudson: Everything we see in the Press is not necessarily correct.

Mr. Morrison: Is he aware that the communication, which I think he has seen, was personally signed by each member of the crew?

Mr. Hudson: That does not alter the fact that I have stated in the answer, that so far as I have been able to ascertain no such Order has been issued by any authority. I cannot say more than that.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE

Grey Squirrels

Earl Winterton: asked the Minister of Agriculture if he is aware that serious damage is resulting to agriculture and sylviculture from the number of grey squirrels in many parts of England; and if he will direct the attention of the pest officers of county war agricultural executive committees to this matter.

Mr. Hudson: I am aware of the damage caused by grey squirrels and when county war agricultural executive committees were recently given powers to deal with this pest they were informed of the need for prompt and drastic action to destroy these animals.

Earl Winterton: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the real difficulty is a supply of cartridges, and that whereas other vermin can be dealt with by poison and trapping, the only way of dealing with these grey squirrels is by a shot gun, and that pest officers of local committees say they cannot obtain cartridges?

Mr. Hudson: Supplies of 12-bore cartridges are being substantially increased, and it should be easier to obtain them from dealers.

Earl Winterton: I am sorry to say that I must give my right hon. Friend the trouble of hearing this matter raised on the Adjournment.

Waģes

Mr. De la Bère: asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he has considered the resolution passed by certain branches of the National Union of Agricultural Workers, a copy of which has been sent to him; and what action the Government proposes to take in connection with this claim for higher wages.

Mr. Hudson: Yes, Sir, but under the Agricultural Wages (Regulation) Acts, as varied by Order in Council, the Agricultural Wages Board has the sole responsibility for determining the levels of the minimum rates of wages for agricultural workers.

Mr. De la Bère: Does my right hon. Friend not realise that skilled agricultural workers desire a rate of pay more closely related to that of the industrial worker, and how can this be done unless there are some further adjustments of farm prices? The whole matter is one which must receive attention. It is no good going on like this.

Oral Answers to Questions — NATIONAL FINANCE

Directed Workers (Travelling Expenses Allowance)

Mr. Foster: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will give consideration to raising the maximum allowance of £10 travelling expenses for Income Tax purposes to meet the cases of workers directed to employment long distances from home.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer (Sir John Andreson): I am afraid that I can hold out no hope of an increase in the allowance for additional travelling expenses to which my hon. Friend refers.

Mr. Foster: Will the Chancellor give consideration to this matter as there are thousands of workers who have been directed to employment in the case of which travelling expenses are far in excess of £10 allowed for Income Tax purposes? Will he reconsider the matter with a view to improving the position?

Sir J. Anderson: I am afraid not. This matter was very carefully looked into at the time. This concession of £10 allowance was a valuable one quite outside the ordinary scheme of the Income Tax. I would point out that assistance by way of Income Tax allowance is by no means the only way by which the position of workers can be eased.

Mr. Buchanan: Is the Chancellor aware that if those transferred had gone to live where the work was, and they were marriedmen, they would have received an additional allowance from the Government, and by travelling they save the


Government that allowance? Will the Chancellor not consider that in this matter?

Sir J. Anderson: I do not think it would be possible to carry the matter further without entering the region of debate.

Mr. Burke: Is the Chancellor aware that since the£10 allowance was decided upon many buses have been withdrawn and men have been forced to travel by railway at double cost?

Sir J. Anderson: I would point out again that this allowance is not the only way by which the position of the workers can be eased.

State Pensions (Increase)

General Sir George Jeffreys: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer when he proposes to introduce the Bill to provide for increases of State pensions in cases of hardship arising from the increased cost of living; and whether this legislation will include provision for the increase of pensions granted in respect of service in the Forces.

Sir J. Anderson: Notice of the introduction of the Pensions (Increase) Bill has already appeared in the Order Paper. Copies of the Bill will be made available in the Vote Office to-day. The Bill will contain two schemes for the increase of pension, namely, a general scheme applicable to all classes of pensioners within the scope of the Bill and a special scheme applicable to certain civil servants only. The general scheme will provide for the increase of smaller pensions subject to certain means limits. The special scheme will provide for increases irrespective of means of those Civil Service pensions not exceeding £600 a year granted after the last war which were subject to variation in accordance with changes in the cost of living index figure and were stabilised in 1934 and 1935 at rates appropriate to a cost of living index figure of 155.
The Bill will not cover Service pensions of officers and men in the Forces because such pensions are granted under Orders in Council, Royal Warrants, or King's Orders. Provision will be made under those instruments for increases of Service pensions of officers and men of the Forces similar to those provided in the general scheme under the Bill In addition,

retired officers whose scales of Service retired pay introduced after the last war were subject to cost of living adjustment until they were stabilised in 1935 will receive increases on terms corresponding approximately to those provided by the special scheme.

Mr. McEntee: Can the Chancellor say whether the police and Royal Irish Constabulary will be included?

Sir J. Anderson: Yes, I made a promise, and it is carried out in the Bill.

Private Traders (Income Tax)

Mr. Lipson: asked the Chancellor of the Exchequer if he will take steps to give to the private trader who is in business on his own account a remission of Income Tax liability equivalent to that allowed to the employed person under the Pay-as-you-earn scheme.

Sir J. Anderson: I would remind my hon. Friend that the discharge of tax in the case of employees is given only where it is necessary in order to prevent overlapping payments of tax on the transfer to "Pay-as-you-earn." No question of overlap arises for the private trader.

Mr. Lipson: Is my right hon. Friend aware that persons trading on their own account feel that they are being treated unjustly when they are denied a remission of tax liability which is granted to employees whose income may actually be greater in some instances than theirs, and will he give the matter further consideration?

Sir J. Anderson: If my hon. Friend was present during the recent Debate on Pay-as-you-earn he will recall that definite notice was taken of that position by speakers on this bench and speakers in other parts of the House.

Oral Answers to Questions — MEMBERS OF PARLIAMENT (CIVIL AND MILITARY SERVICES)

Mr. Mander: asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury if he will publish a list of Members of the House of Commons serving in His Majesty's Forces or assisting His Majesty's Government in a civil capacity on the lines of information given in Cmd. 6255, published in February, 1941, and stating whether services are paid or unpaid.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr. Assheton): Yes, Sir, as soon as practicable. My hon. Friend will no doubt appreciate that the collection of the material for such a return from the responsible Departments must take some time.

Oral Answers to Questions — CHILDREN'S CLOTHING COUPONS (SALE BY PARENTS)

Mr. Thorne: asked the President of the Board of Trade if he will take steps to stop parents selling children's coupons; and if his attention has been called to the case of Robert Eserton, of Hooten Street, Nottingham, selling his children's Coupons.

The Partiamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Captain Waterhouse): The sale of clothing coupons is illegal, and all possible steps are taken to enforce the law. In the particular case to which my hon. Friend refers, the proceedings were taken by the Board of Trade. The defendant was charged at Nottingham, on the 17th February, with illegally transferring clothing coupons, and was convicted and sentenced to one month's imprisonment.

Oral Answers to Questions — PENSIONS APPEAL TRIBUNALS

Sir I. Fraser asked the Attorney-General, how many claimants have appealed to date for hearing before the pensions appeal tribunals; how many of these appeals have been heard; and how many have been allowed, disallowed, adjourned and are still awaiting he: 

The Attorney-General (Sir Donald Somervell): Up to the 12th February, 1944, more than 20,500 appeals had been lodged with the Minister of Pensions who, in a substantial proportion of them had revised his previous decision. By the 18th February, 1,806 appeals had been heard by the Tribunals, of which 395 had been allowed, 1,128 had been disallowed and 251 had been adjourned. On that date 1,737 appeals were awaiting hearing by the Tribunals.

Oral Answers to Questions — WIRELESS LICENCES

Mr. Thorne: asked the Postmaster-General, how many radio licences in Britain and Northern Ireland have been taken out for 1943.

The Assistant Postmaster-General (Mr. Grimston): The number of broadcast wireless receiving licences issued in Great Britain and Northern Ireland during the year 1943 was approximately 9,436,000.

Mr. Thorne: Has the hon. Gentleman any information as to whether some people who have not taken out licences are using other people's wireless?

Captain Pluģģe: May I ask my hon. Friend if, with a view to increasing the number of radio licences, he will arrange to lift the ban on radios in motor cars?

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH PRISONERS OF WAR (PAY)

Sir C. Edwards: asked the Secretary of State for War the payments made to prisoners of war; how much is deducted from earnings which they may receive; and on what basis are such deductions made from their accounts.

Mr. A. Henderson: I assume my right hon. Friend is inquiring about the treatment of British prisoners in enemy hands. All officers are paid by the enemy the rates of pay for the corresponding ranks in his own Forces, and deductions equivalent to those payments are made from the pay of officers at home. Other ranks who are protected by the Geneva Red Cross Convention (for example, medical personnel) are also paid by the enemy Government the rates for the corresponding German and Japanese ranks, and equivalent deductions are made from the home pay accounts. Combatant other ranks are not entitled to pay from enemy Governments unless they work. No deduction is made from home pay accounts in respect of any working pay they may receive. All officers and other ranks continue to be credited at home with the rate of pay in issue to them at the time of capture, subject to the deductions I have described above.

Sir C. Edwards: Is my hon. and learned Friend aware that I have come across a prisoner of war, a private soldier, who has had £80 deducted from him? That does not quite fit in with the answer that has been given.

Mr. Henderson: If my right hon. Friend will give me particulars, I will gladly look into the matter.

Colonel Greenwell: Do these arrangements apply to men interned in Switzerland?

Mr. Henderson: No, Sir; this applies to prisoners of war in enemy hands. Of course, Switzerland is a neutral country.

Dr. Haden Guest: Will my hon. and learned Friend go further into the matter of the pay of men who are protected by the Geneva Convention? As he knows, there have been complaints that they are unfairly discriminated against. Can he improve the position? It is impossible to go into the whole matter in a supplementary question, but I think he knows what I refer to.

Mr. Henderson: My hon. Friend can be sure that when cases of unfair discrimination are brought to the attention of His Majesty's Government, prompt representations will be made to the enemy Government.

Oral Answers to Questions — MERCHANT NAVY GUNNERS (PAY)

Mr. Loverseed: asked the First Lord of the Admiralty the respective rates of pay of Merchant Navy gunners and Royal Navy gunners employed on merchant ships; and the amount of danger pay received by the former.

The Financial Secretary to the Admiralty (Mr. J. P. L. Thomas): The bases on which rates of pay and allowances in the Merchant Navy and in the Royal Navy are framed differ so fundamentally that comparisons between them are misleading. Merchant seamen trained as gunners receive the National Maritime Board rate of pay appropriate to their rating. While actually embarked, they receive additional allowances of £10 per month (or £2 6s. 8d. weekly) war risk money, and 3d. or 6d. per day according to their gunnery qualifications. Naval gunners are paid naval rates according to the rating held. They receive 3d. or 6d. per day according to their gunnery non-sub-stantive rate, plus an additional 6d. per day while actually embarked.

Mr. Loverseed: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that an anomaly does arise where men of two Services are doing exactly the same job, on the same ship, and are receiving such totally different rates of pay? Is he aware that that state of affairs is

causing a certain amount of dissatisfaction among naval ratings?

Mr. Thomas: The naval rating is paid in this case, according to the scales approved by the Royal Navy for service remuneration in general. It is impossible to compare these two rates of pay; so much has to be taken into consideration, because of marriage allowances and assessment for Income Tax.

Mr. Palmer: Would it be possible for my hon. Friend to circulate in the OFFICIAL REPORT a comparative statement setting out these details, because there is a certain amount of grievance and misunderstanding on this subject?

Mr. Thomas: Certainly, I will consider that.

Mr. Hugh Lawson: Does not this anomaly indicate that the scales of pay for naval ratings are far too low?

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Mr. Arthur Greenwood: May I ask the Leader of the House the Business for the next series of Sittings?

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Eden): The Business for the next series of Sittings will be as follows:
First Sitting Day—It is proposed to move Mr. Speaker out of the Chair on going into Committee of Supply on the Air Estimates, and to consider Votes A, 1 and 8, and Air Supplementary Estimate in Committee.
Second Sitting Day—Consideration of the Lords Amendments to the Disabled Persons (Employment) Bill; Report and Third Reading of the Reinstatement in Civil Employment Bill; Committee stage of Civil Supplementary Estimates relating to the Foreign Office; Diplomatic and Consular Services, and Old Age Pensions; Report stage of outstanding Supplementary Estimates; and Second Reading of the India (Attachment of States) Bill [Lords].
Third Sitting Day—It is proposed to move Mr. Speaker out of the Chair on the Army Estimates, and to consider Votes A and 1 and Army Supplementary Estimate in Committee.
Fourth Sitting Day—Second Reading of the Pensions (Increase) Bill, and Committee stage of the necessary Money Resolution; Committee and remaining stages of the Public Works Loans Bill; and, if there is time, we hope to make further progress with the Naval Forces (Extension of Service) Bill [Lords].
Perhaps I ought at this moment to mention that I propose shortly to ask the House to go into Secret Session, in order that I might make a statement about hours and Sittings of the House.

Mr. Shinwell: Has the right hon. Gentleman yet reached a decision on the proposition made to him regarding a Debate on Dominion economic policy, and, if so, will he say what the decision is?

Mr. Eden: I was asked for a day for Dominion affairs and I have been considering the matter. As the House knows, we expect that in the near future the meeting of Dominion Prime Ministers on inter-Imperial co-operation will take place. As the subject to be discussed is one for all five Governments, the House will understand that His Majesty's Government will not themselves want at this stage to make a considered statement on their account; but, as I understood the request the other day, the desire of hon. Members was that they should express their points of view on the matter. If it is understood that the Government cannot be expected to declare their position before going into this meeting, I will try to arrange the necessary facilities as soon as we reasonably can.

Mr. Turton: When will the Debate on medals, which was promised last November, take place? Will my right hon. Friend bear in mind the importance of giving early notice of that Debate, so that Members serving in the Forces may take part?

Mr. Eden: I will certainly do what my hon. Friend suggests in the second part of the question. With regard to the first part, he knows that the Prime Minister himself has taken a keen interest in the matter. I cannot give a date now when my right hon. Friend will be able to deal with the matter in the House.

Mr. Erskine-Hill: Can my right hon. Friend say anything about a day being

given to deal with the question of delegated legislation?

Mr. Eden: We are considering the matter, but I am afraid I cannot give a date to-day.

Mr. R. C. Morrison: What is the policy of the Government in regard to the Education Bill? Is it intended to drag on throughout the whole Session, giving a day occasionally and half a day occasionally? Is there to be any definite proposal, so that we can make progress with the Bill?

Mr. Eden: I do not think my hon. Friend's description is quite accurate. We have been giving two days at a time. It is certainly our desire to make progress, but, as I told the House, I do not wish to resort to any other method of procedure. With a Bill of this kind, it is undesirable to do so if we can avoid it.

Miss Rathbone: Is it proposed in the Debate which my right hon. Friend announced for the second Sitting Day, on foreign affairs, to include the Vote on His Majesty's Government's contribution towards the work of the Inter-Governmental Committee on Refugees, and will ample opportunity be given to discuss the work of that important Committee, because it is a very long time since it has been discussed?

Mr. Eden: The Vote to which the hon. Lady refers is down for discussion.

Miss Rathbone: Is it not unlikely that there will be enough time for it on such a very busy day, with three or four other matters to be considered?

Mr. Eden: I think the hon. Lady can be assured that there will be time. We certainly do not want to burke discussion on this issue.

Mr. Thorne: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether he will be able to get through the Committee stage and Third reading of the Education Bill before Easter?

Mr. Eden: I should much like to, but I would not like to prophesy.

Sir Granville Gibson: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether any decision has been arrived at about a day for the discussion of the Civil List?

Mr. Eden: I cannot make an announcement upon that until the next series of Sittings.

Mr. Stokes: Regarding to-day's Business, would it not be for the convenience of the House if the Leader of the House told us how far he expects to get with the Committee stage of the Education Bill?

Mr. Eden: I think that is a matter on which I look for the co-operation of my hon. Friend. We hope to make reasonable progress, and to come back to the BM, if opportunity offers, after a certain interruption.

Mr. Buchanan: May I ask whether it is intended to sit any later than the normal time to-day?

Hon. Members: One hour.

Mr. Buchanan: Would it not be for the convenience of the House if the right hon. Gentleman were to tell us whether, on the Water Bills for which Business is to be interrupted to-day, any progress has been made in negotiation, and whether the discussion of the Education Bill is likely to be resumed?

Mr. Eden: I have suggested that we should sit for one extra hour, and it is our hope that we shall be able to resume the proceedings on the Education Bill.

Mr. Buchanan: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether, on the Water Bills, there have been any approaches, with a view to shortening the proceedings?

Mr. Eden: I have some hope that it will not take very long.

Mr. Boothby: In view of the fact that a comprehensive Debate on economic policy is taking place in another place, will the Government consider giving a day to a Debate on the Motion standing on the Order Paper in the name of the hon. Member for East Aberdeen?
[That, in the opinion of this House, the primary objective of our economic policy should be the maintenance of full employment; and His Majesty's Government should now take the steps necessary to carry out an expansionist policy designed to achieve this end.]

Mr. Eden: I could not do that at present. We seem to have a pretty rich fare on the menu as it is.

Mr. Granville: On the question of the possibility of a day to discuss Empire economic questions, are we to understand from the right hon. Gentleman's reply that it is the intention of the Government to provide a day, although the Government do not intend to disclose their hand? This subject has been discussed in every Dominion but it has not been discussed in this House for many years. Are we to understand that, on the second Sitting Day in the next series of Sittings, the right hon. Gentleman intends to give another day for a foreign affairs Debate?

Mr. Eden: Regarding the first part of the question, the original request made to me was for a Debate on Dominion relations, in a pretty wide aspect. That was the object I had in mind, and, so long as it is known that the Government cannot make their official pronouncement, I will try to arrange a day in the near future, although I cannot give one now. Regarding the Supplementary Estimates, I do not think they raise very large questions.

Mr. McNeil: Is the right hon. Gentleman in a position to say when we may hope for a Debate on housing?

Mr. Eden: We have that in mind, but I cannot say at present when such a Debate can be arranged.

NEW MEMBER SWORN

John Burns Hynd, Esq., for the Borough of Sheffield (Attercliffe Division).

BILLS REPORTED

YORKSHIRE REGISTRIES (WEST RIDING) AMENDMENT BILL

Reported, without Amendment, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills.

Bill to be read the Third time.

BECKETT HOSPITAL AND DISPENSARY, BARNSLEY, BILL

Reported, with Amendments, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills (with Report on the Bill).

Bill, as amended, and Report to lie upon the Table; Report to be printed.

CITY OF LONDON (VARIOUS POWERS) BILL

Reported, with Amendments, from the Committee on Unopposed Bills (with Report on the Bill).

Bill, as amended, and Report to lie upon the Table; Report to be printed.

Orders of the Day — EDUCATION BILL

Considered in Committee. [Progress, 16th February.]

[Major MILNER in the Chair]

CLAUSE 12.—(Establishment and discontinuance of county and auxiliary schools.)

Amendment proposed: In page 9, line 33, at the end, to insert:
otherwise than in pursuance of a development plan submitted under the provisions of Section ten of this Act."—[Mr. Moelwyn Hughes.]
Question again proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

Mr. Clement Davies: When the Committee adjourned last week we were discussing this Amendment, the purpose of which is the avoidance of duplication and waste of time. The Committee will recall that under Clause 10 a plan has to be drawn up by the local authority. They are allowed 12 months in which to prepare it, and then it has to be submitted to the Minister. He considers it and, if he approves of it, he makes an order under Clause 11. There is then the plan for the whole of the area covered by that local authority. Under Clause 12 as it stands there has to be a repetition of all the stages which the local authority have gone through in preparing their plan under Clause 10. The suggestion made by the Parliamentary Secretary was that the plan under Clause 10 would not contain very many particulars but be rather of a general nature, and I was disputing that when the Committee adjourned. Let me point out how detailed is the plan prepared under Clause 10. I had already dealt with paragraph (a) of Sub-section (2), where it says they are to specify which of the schools should become secondary schools and give particulars even of the proposals which they have made as to the nature of the education to be provided. Under paragraph (b) they have even to specify what alterations are required in the premises of any school and furnish estimates of the cost. That means going completely into details. Under paragraph (c) the plan must specify what additional county schools and auxiliary schools, if any, will be required in the area. Further, the plan is to
contain such other particulars of the proposals of the authority with respect to schools for providing primary and secondary education for their area as the authority think necessary, or as the Minister may require:
In doing all that they have to consult the managers under Sub-section (3), which says:
A local education authority shall, before submitting their development plan to the Minister, consult the managers or governors, or persons representing the managers or governors, of all schools other than county schools, whether within or without the area of the authority, which would in the opinion of the authority be affected by the execution of the plan, and shall, after submitting the plan to the Minister, forthwith furnish to the managers or governors of every such school such particulars relating to the plan as are sufficient to show the manner in which the school would be affected by the execution thereof.

A whole 12 months are to be taken up in going into all these details, and then the complete plan for the area is drawn up and is submitted to the Minister. He takes his own time over considering it and then he makes his order. Then we come to Clause 12, which says:
Where a local authority intend—
(a) to establish a new county school.
That comes within the plan under Clause 10; or
(b) to maintain as a county school any school which at the time being is not such a school.
This again is dealt with under Clause 10; or
(c) to cease to maintain any county school … they shall submit proposals for that purpose to the Minister.
But they have already done it. Why have they to do it a second time? Having done that, they then have to wait three months, during which period an opportunity is given either for the management or for any 10 electors to make objections. The whole thing will be held up for three months, because under Sub-section (5) a local authority
shall not without the leave of the Minister do or undertake to do anything … for which proposals are required by this Section to be submitted to the Minister until such proposals have been approved by him.
If Clause 12 remains unamended there will be a postponement for an extra three months even after the plan has been approved. That seems to be playing with the whole matter. I submit that there has been shockingly bad drafting. If the Government wanted to maintain the right of 10 electors to oppose the proposals or to make their own proposals it should have been arranged for in Clause 10, before the final plan was drawn up. For some reason or other the draftsman has been unable to frame it that way. As an after-thought he puts it all in again in Clause 12. The only way in which we can put this matter right is by accepting this Amendment which says "Frame a plan, have a year for the consideration of the scheme, and there is an end of the whole matter."

Mr. Kenneth Lindsay: I think my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) is mistaken upon one or two points, but I am getting so alarmed over the number of occasions on which these development


plans can be held up that I wish to ask the Parliamentary Secretary a few questions. He has spoken earlier of a complete survey, with details of every auxiliary school and an estimate of bringing it up to date. As I understand it the difference between Clause 10 and Clause 12 is the difference between a plan and specific proposals, but I am not sure that that is quite good enough, because the President of the Board of Education said a development plan referred only to the lay-out of existing schools within an authority's area. Is it not time that we became a little realist about the nature of this development plan?
I have taken the trouble to look up the 1921 Act and it seems to me that, so far from speeding up the proposals any local education authorities may put forward, this Bill is going to lengthen the procedure. In Clause 18 there is a provision for new schools, and the scheme suggested by Mr. Fisher is not very different from the new development plan. In fact, the only difference is that there is an Education Order, and I agree with the hon. and learned Member for Carmarthen (Mr. M. Hughes) and the hon. Member who has just spoken that there is likely to be some duplication. But it is much more serious than that, especially after the last few days and nights.
We are living in an utterly different world. A large number of schools no longer exist, and for many areas, certainly many county borough and built-up areas, no plan worth its name can be put forward until the general civic planning scheme is also put forward. How do we know where the population is going to be housed? How do we know where the arteries of transport will be required and, in regard to the religious question, how do we know where Catholic and Church of England schools are going to be required? We are at present living in a complete dream world on these matters. There is in fact no difference between the Fisher scheme, which asks for a progressive and comprehensive scheme of education, and this plan. The only difference is that my hon. Friend limited his words to existing schools and the alteration in auxiliary schools which were going to be made into county schools. I understand also that this plan does not include technical adult education: this is for secondary and primary schools only.
I should like to ask my hon. Friend about the Amendment which he accepted from the hon. and gallant Member for North Portsmouth (Sir W. James). I have reread the wording of that Amendment. Does it mean that this plan is going to include the playing fields? The only point in accepting that Amendment was that it must come into the development plan. His whole speech was devoted to the building process and unless playing-fields are also included which implies a detailed knowledge of the general civic plan it seems to me we cannot make much progress. Either Clause 10 is going to be a general financial estimate or something in fairly considerable detail. I continue this because of a highly informed article in "The Times Educational Supplement" of a few weeks ago, in which the writer said: "Mr. Butler wants to know what new schools you want and where you want them." Until physical reconstruction plans are ready he said "it is impossible to give more than a provisional answer." In his words, all educational planning remains "tentative."
I appreciate the point my hon. Friend made that where a new school is going to be built you must obviously have some local inquiry. This may be more democratic, but it is also more delaying. Right at the end of the last Debate my hon. Friend accepted an Amendment from the hon. Member for Tamworth (Sir J. Mellor). He accepted it in a peculiar way. He said "We had to resist all the others so we accept this." He also said the Amendment had been moved very convincingly. What does that mean? The Amendment means a further delay. If local education authorities disagree with Clause 11 or with certain points in it, the Education Order can come back to this House and can lie on the table for 40 days. I am all for genuine democracy and proper regard to people's wishes, but the number of delays now being put in Clauses 10, 11 and 12 does not mean a speeding up process in building schools as compared with the Fisher Act or with pre-war methods. It does mean that the Education Order lays some of the obligation on the local education authorities.
Then I come to my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall (Sir G. Schuster). He rather attacked me in the opening Debate on this Bill when I said "Direction rather than control," and yet


in moving an Amendment he said he hoped the Minister would not modify the plan of the local authority and give directions to over-ride the original plan—

The Chairman: I do not think the hon. Member should extend his remarks to all these other Clauses. He should confine himself to the Amendment in question.

Mr. Lindsay: I will bring my remarks to a close, but I rose to speak because we do not yet know the exact financial relations between Whitehall and the Local Authorities. We have already agreed that the size of classes and the equivalence of secondary schools have got to be in regulations that we have not seen, and yet we are parting with the main issue of this Bill, which is a development plan, on Clause 10, and I am only asking that some consideration shall be given to the Amendment moved by my hon. and learned Friend who wishes to be quite sure that there is no duplication between Clause 12 and Clause 10. I beg to support the Amendment.

Sir Patrick Hannon: May I make an appeal to the Chair? We all want to facilitate the passage of this Bill and all of us who are seriously concerned with Amendments are very anxious to make them clear, but I would suggest that hon. Members in moving Amendments might make their speeches more concise and keep to the point.

Earl Winterton: On a point of Order. Is it not correct to say that whether Members make their speeches brief or not has nothing to do with the Chair? It is one of the privileges and rights of this House that individual Members shall decide on the length of their speeches.

The Chairman: In strictness, the Noble Lord is, of course, correct, but I hope the Committee will co-operate in keeping speeches short.

Mr. Lindsay: I refrained from speaking during the discussions on Clause 10, and that is why I had to intervene to support my hon. Friend to-day.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Education (Mr. Ede): I think that if we proceed along the lines followed

by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) we may be able to get this matter correctly into perspective. The development plan was described the other day by the hon. and learned Member for Carmarthen (Mr. M. Hughes) as a blue print. My hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich (Mr. Stokes) said it was not a blue print but a sketch. May I say that on that matter I find myself somewhat surprisingly in alliance with the hon. Member for Ipswich. The development plan, in the main, is a sketch and not a blue print, and I think the Committee will see the strength of that remark when we examine Clause 10 (2, c) along the lines adopted by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery. Clause 10 (2, a and b) relate to existing schools and can be examined in complete detail. The surveys, in most cases, are already in the offices of the education authorities and the question in many cases will merely be whether it is better to patch up an old school or build a new one. I think that will be the main contention under (a) and (b) but when we come to (c) I find myself in agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock (Mr. Lindsay).
Clearly, when we come to new schools—the development plan will have to be finished by the 31st March, 1946—we shall have to know where the population is going to be and we shall also want to know about the layout of the district. We hope to be in on the town planning in a way we never have been in the past. When local authorities are laying out a district they will have to show that they have taken into consideration the population in relation to where the schools are to be built. But before 1st April, 1946—I take the point that was made by the hon. Member—it will be exceedingly difficult to say, to use the words that the hon. and learned Member for Carmarthen used last week, "That is the spot where the school will be." We may not even know the wishes of the parents with regard to a particular school.
Take the Roman Catholic community. When the London County Council started to build the St. Helier estate, the Roman Catholics came to the Surrey County Council and said that experience showed that 8½ per cent. of the children would be Roman Catholics, and therefore they would want two Roman Catholic schools for this particular estate. At that time,


however, they did not know whether, in fact, the Roman Catholics would be there, but it would have been quite right, had we been considering the development plan, to have put in two auxiliary schools to be provided by the Roman Catholic community. In future we might, similarly, have to put in schools to be provided by the Church of England. Now it is quite clear that at the time the development plan is finished there will be, with regard to new schools—and hon. Members will notice that Clause 10 (2, c) relates entirely to new schools—the necessity for such authorities to "specify what additional county schools and auxiliary schools, if any, will be required for their area" and I do hope the Committee will realise that.

Mr. C. Davies: Will that apply to schools already in existence?

Mr. Ede: I am not assuming that any notice under Clause 12 will be required for mere alterations.

Mr. C. Davies: Clause 12 (a), I think, relates to new schools, and Clause 12 (b) to the maintaining of a county school.

Mr. Ede: That might be a school which is not in existence at all within the public estimate. You may have a private school that for certain reasons desires to be brought into the public system and, quite clearly, before that can be done, whether it be included in the development plan or not, the locality ought to be consulted as to whether they desire that to happen.

Mr. Lindsay: Is that the meaning of Clause 12 (b)?

Mr. Ede: That is one meaning. Also, of course, it would relate to the case of the auxiliary school which desires to be transferred. May I say, in view of the provisions in the Bill for controlled status and the financial advantages to be drawn from that, that it is very unlikely that an auxiliary school will ask to be transferred to county school status. The controlled school status, with its financial advantages, is, of course, a new thing in this Bill. In the framing of the development plan, the negotiations will take place between what I may call the big battalions of the interests involved, with, more or less, the headquarters staffs, and the representatives of the county and the representatives of the

managers of the different denominational types of schools. The parents at that stage will not know from any publication what is going on, and it is quite right that these general arrangements should be made and that the sketch should be prepared. With regard to old schools, it is unlikely that notice will be required, but with regard to new schools, in the areas where schools have to be built, very often for the first time, it is clearly right that public notice should be given, so that parents shall know what is the actual proposal of the local education authority, You may put a site on the town plan and my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary of the Ministry of War Transport may come along and place an arterial road between the site of the school and the homes of the bulk of the children.

Mr. Lindsay: My hon. Friend said just now that we were working this time in close conjunction with the town and country planning people.

Mr. Ede: My hon. Friend knows that even their plans develop. I have had the good fortune to serve on an authority which is both an education authority and a highway authority, and it is very difficult to see which of the two plans develop and vary the quicker. It is clearly right that, when we come to the actual provision of the school, the parent should have a very considerable voice with regard both to the siting and to the type of school. This will be the more necessary in future, because we are, for the first time, giving the parents any right in questions relating to the establishment and provision of secondary education. Hitherto parents have had no voice in that at all, and no notices have had to be given under Section 18 of the Act, which only relates to elementary schools. But in future parents may very well desire that there shall be a greater proportion of grammar school or technical school accommodation than is actually in the development plan and may wish to make their submissions to the local education authority on that point.
I hope that the Committee will feel that this is a necessary corollary to the Amendment which was accepted the other day by my right hon. Friend dealing with the rights of parents with regard to the type of school that was to be submitted. He said then that the spirit of that Amendment


must pervade the whole of the later Clauses of the Bill, and this is one of the places where, if we resist this Amendment, we can retain a substantial right for the parents.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Montgomery drew attention to Sub-section (5) of Clause 12. There, for the first time, we are enabling the Minister, where it is a matter of grave urgency, to dispense with this notice procedure. It says:
The local education authority shall not, without the leave of the Minister, do or undertake to do anything.
In the past, the Departments and local authorities have been seriously handicapped by a speculating builder suddenly deciding to develop say, 1,000, or even more, houses in a particular area, and nothing could be done until after the expiration of the three months' notice which, after all—I ought to insert this in parenthesis—is only re-enacting the existing law with regard to the three months' notice. The local education authority could not proceed until the end of the three months, and we very often had the scandal of children running about out of school for nine or 12 months. It is hard enough, in any event, to keep pace with the speculating builder when he is determined to do his worst. We have provided, in the words "without the leave of the Minister," for this procedure to be dispensed with where a case of grave urgency exists, and it is necessary to get on with the building of the school. In all these matters, we shall have to face two conflicting interests, the desire for urgency, Which we share with my hon. and learned Friends, and also our desire—and I am sure the desire of the whole Committee—that the locality shall be able effectively to voice its views with regard to the type of school and the siting of the school.
I hope that the Committee will agree that, in retaining Clause 12 in its present form, we shall be able to deal with both of these matters. There is one inconsistency which I ought to point out. Whereas the Amendment is moved to Clause 12 (1), it is not moved to Clause 12 (2), although Clause 12 (2) will also relate to schools, promoted by the denominations, that will be in the development plan. Clearly, what is sauce for the council goose is sauce for the denominational

gander, and we ought to insert a similar Amendment there also. But I would suggest to the Committee that there is no desire on the part of the Board to provoke any unnecessary delay, but we desire that the schools, when erected, shall be those which legitimately appeal to the local authority in which they are to be erected.

Mr. Moelwyn Hughes: When this Debate was adjourned after the last sitting of the Committee, I hoped that by to-day the Parliamentary Secretary would have been able to come here with some suggestion that would have put the terms of the Bill somewhat more into conformity with the case which he makes for it. If, as he now says, it is the intention to deal with the general viewpoint of the whole area of the local education authority, that it is the intention to consider denominational or other group interests as a whole for the area, and that the provisions with which we are now dealing under Clause 12 are thus limited to immediate and local wishes, it would have been the simplest thing for the draftsmen of the Bill to have said so. They could have said so in Clause 12, but, instead of having any concession to meet this obvious duplication, I am even more perturbed by the speech of the Parliamentary Secretary than I was upon my consideration of the Clause before I put down the Amendment. Apparently, the design and intention now is, that, having got your plan and having agreed with the denomination on the number of particular types of schools that are required, the moment you come to site them, you are cutting through not only the question of siting, but through the whole desirability of the particular type of school. There is nothing in Clause 12 to limit it to the matters of which the Parliamentary Secretary spoke. I do not want to delay the Bill and I agree with the hon. Member who said that it is undesirable to prolong these discussions, but I assure the Committee that I am far more concerned with the delay in effecting these educational reforms if we are to have proceedings for objection piled one on top of the other before we can get the new schools. Therefore, I must insist on my Amendment, and I do not wish to withdraw it.

Mr. Ivor Thomas: This is an entirely academic Debate. The development of our educational system is not going to be hindered by the speed


with which the development plans can be carried out; the limiting factors in this Bill are bricks and mortar and teachers. The delays that will come from these material and personnel difficulties are immeasurably greater than any that may be due to the development plan. I see nothing that will delay the operation of our educational system through this proposal, and I shall support the Government.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. Moelwyn Hughes: I beg to move, in page 9, line 40, after "they," to insert:
shall, if they are a local education authority in Wales, consult the Central Advisory Council for Education for Wales referred to in section four of this Act, and.
This Amendment, which also stands in the name of other hon. Members, raises a point which has been discussed by the Committee before. I do not want to repeat the arguments of the desirability of having Wales considered comprehensively, or to press the Amendment, but I would ask either the right hon. Gentleman or the Parliamentary Secretary to say that they will, as far as they administratively can, see to it, that the needs of Wales as a whole are kept in view when the different local authorities are preparing their plans and setting up the new schools.

The President of the Board of Education (Mr. Butler): We had our Debate on the duties of the Advisory Councils at an earlier stage, and our idea has always been that they shall be advisory, and that we shall leave their authorities' administration and function uninterrupted. I cannot believe that the local education authorities in Wales or the Federation would desire that this Amendment should be carried. I appreciate the sincerity of the hon. and learned Member who has moved the Amendment, because he desires to be certain that the Welsh position in this regard is fully safeguarded. If I satisfy him by saying that, in England, we would not desire this to be the case, I hope he will feel that Wales has been in no way less well provided. Our desire is to see that the position of the authorities in Wales, in the drawing up of plans for their areas, is in no way prejudiced. The place at which the Advisory Council is to come is not the planning of the schools,

the question of new schools and so forth, but the wider educational sphere, which we discussed previously. That would not prevent its having its say on those matters where legislation impinges on educational theory, but it does mean that they should not interfere with the day to day administration. Therefore I hope that my hon. and learned Friend will not press the Amendment.

Professor Gruffydd: I have only a question to ask the Minister on the matter. I sympathise with his point of view very largely, and for that reason I did not put my name to the Amendment. I realise that you cannot very well get the Central Advisory Council to give advice to the local education authorities unless that advice is asked for, and it should only be given through the Minister. There is no provision for that in the Amendment, but there is a very important complement to this Amendment, and I can best put the matter in the form of a question. Is it likely, in the Minister's opinion, that the Central Advisory Council will be given an opportunity of stating their opinion on reorganisation in Wales in general to local education authorities before the local education authorities draw up their final plan?

Mr. Butler: It would, naturally, be desirable to have the views of the Welsh Advisory Council. The trouble is that the Council has to be set up, and it can only start doing its work after it has been set up. I would like to see it set up as soon as we get the Bill passed, and that is all the more reason for hurrying on with the Bill. When you have the Advisory Council established, there is rather a doubt in my mind whether it would have been able completely to survey the field, which is a question of the types of education within the secondary schools, in such a way as, we hope, might apply to the development plan. Therefore, I cannot give that undertaking, although one would hope that the Advisory Council would press on with its work.

Mr. Cove: I hope that hon. Members will do everything they can to preserve the rights of the elected councils in this matter and not give everything over, even to non-elected Advisory Councils. I do not want to argue the matter any further.

Mr. C. Davies: Our desire is that a good standard should be maintained throughout Wales. We are most anxious that each local authority shall work independently, but we know that some authorities are better than others, and all that we are asking for here is not that the Advisory Council should lay down what should be the position but that, before the plan is finally passed with the Minister, the local authority should consult the representative body who might be able to give advice. The Advisory Council might say "We have seen the plan of County A, may we suggest to County B that they should alter their plan and bring it to the higher level which we really desire"?

Mr. Gallacher: We want Wales to have the same education opportunities as Scotland, but we want to get on with the Bill.

Amendment negatived.

Mr. Ede: I beg to move, in page 9, line 45, after "shall," to insert "after consultation with the authority."
These words are on the Order Paper in the name of my right hon. Friend, and I suggest it would be convenient if we take the next three Amendments together with this one.

The Chairman: Yes, that will be in Order.

Mr. Ede: It is clearly right that the local education authority should have some knowledge of the proposals that are being made, and submitted to the Board, with regard to the establishment of auxiliary schools. In the form in which we have put it down we ensure that before the proposals come to the Board at all, they shall have been considered in consultation with the promoters and the local education authority. In that way, where there are merely minor differences, I have no doubt they can be smoothed out and the proceedings facilitated. I suggest, therefore, that the words in the name of my right hon. Friend, while they meet the point of the next three Amendments, meet it in a way that may be even more satisfactory to the hon. Members who put their names to the three Amendments in question.

Sir Adam Maitland: I am much obliged to my hon. Friend for accepting the principle which is embodied

in the three Amendments to which he has referred. I am not quite sure, however, that the words which he uses are as effective as the words of the Amendments in the name of myself and others hon. Members. However, as the principle has been accepted, I think that is as much as one can expect, for one does not always expect to get Amendments accepted in the form in which they are put down. I think, on the whole, as long as the fact is recognised that this consultation is eminently desirable, we shall not press the Amendment, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for having accepted the principle.

Sir P. Hannon: I would like to add one word. Some of our larger education authorities are very much concerned with the Amendments on the Order Paper, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary for the statement he has made to the Committee admitting the principle that the local education authority is to have as much consultation as possible within the limits of effective administration. One of the largest of our education authorities, in which I am interested, will be very grateful for the concession.

Sir Peter Bennett: I agree with what has been said by my hon. Friend that this meets our point of view very thoroughly, but I would suggest, when he comes to administer this, that he may find it convenient to see that he has all the papers in front of him at one time. The wording of the Amendment that we put down made certain that when he had the file, he would have the views of everybody concerned and would not find afterwards that there was some other point which he would have to refer back and so have to pick the file a second time. My small experience of Government Departments is that you do not want to have to handle a file a second time if you can possibly help it, and I suggest that when they have got it they make certain that they have all the views in front of them and do not have to send back and have a second bite at the cherry.

Mr. Eccles: I want to thank the Parliamentary Secretary for meeting the principle of the Amendment which is down in the name of the hon. Member for Stone (Sir J. Lamb) and myself. We are quite satisfied with the words proposed and thank the hon. Gentleman.

Amendment agreed to.

Mr. Hutchinson: I beg to move, in page 10, line 4, after "manner," to insert:
including notice to the county district councils for the area in which the school is situate.
This Amendment and the next one standing in my name—in line 6, after "proposals," to insert "and the council of any county district affected."—have for their purpose two things. The first is to ensure that where a proposal is made to establish a new county school or to maintain as a county school a school which has not hitherto been a county school, the local authority in whose district the school will be, or is, situated should be entitled to receive notice; secondly, that the local authority should be entitled to submit any objections which they might entertain to those proposals. Of those two things the first is, perhaps, of less importance than the second, and I hope, therefore, that the Parliamentary Secretary, or my right hon. Friend, will be able to meet us with regard to the second Amendment. It is important, that where it is proposed to establish a new school, or to discontinue any school which is already established, that the council of the local authority should be entitled to submit any objections which they might entertain to that. Dealing with an earlier Amendment, the Parliamentary Secretary referred to the fact that town planning provision would be required for the establishment of a new school. The local authority in the area where the school is to be established is normally the town planning authority. Therefore, at a later stage, it would have an opportunity of making known its objections by refraining from making the necessary provision in its town planning scheme. I suggest that that is not a satisfactory form of procedure, and it would be very much better to short-circuit the whole business by providing in this Bill that if the local authority has objection to one of these proposals it should be permitted to make its objection at the same time as other persons make their objections when the proposal is first advertised.
Perhaps I might add this further point. The Parliamentary Secretary has also referred to the fact that school siting is a question of special importance to parents, and that it is desirable that parents should have special opportunities

of making their wishes known. One way in which that can be done is through the council of their local authority. It usually happens that the local council are in a strong position to know what are the wishes of the population in their district in matters like this. It would be convenient that they should be entitled to make their objections at the same time as other persons are entitled to make their objections. In these circumstances I very much hope my right hop. Friend will be able to meet us on the second Amendment.

Sir A. Maitland: I support the appeal made by my hon. and learned Friend. I do not think the Minister responsible for the administration of this Bill will lose anything by accepting the Amendment, whatever feelings there may be now in regard to the changes that are being made under the Bill. I think the President will have more to gain by conveying as far as is practicable and reasonable to the local authorities that he is anxious to have their views and to have the benefit of their experience on matters which are really of local concern and interest. In that short way I appeal to my right hon. Friend, because it will have a very reassuring effect upon the minds of local authorities and those concerned.

Mr. Bartle Bull: Is it the Minister's intention to reply to this Amendment and the next one in the name of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Ilford (Mr. Hutchinson)?

Mr. Butler: I will, with your permission, Major Milner, deal with these Amendments at the same time. The proposition put by the hon. and learned Member for Ilford (Mr. Hutchinson) and others who have taken part in this Debate, is certainly a very attractive one. It is naturally our desire to bring those who are responsible for local government into these matters as much as possible, but I think, if they examine the wording of their Amendments and realise the scope of what they are suggesting, they will perhaps not press me, but for just one moment I will explain how this matter may come up at a later stage in the Bill. The wording of the first Amendment—"in which the school is situated"—is rather wide, and does not cover the case in which a number of county district councils are served by a particular school.
On the other hand, the second Amendment, which deals with the council of any county district affected, does open up to us as educationists a very wide picture of any county district council in the country being brought in, without being absolute experts on the subject, into the detailed question of the setting up of a new school. That has appealed to hon. Members because of the possibility of such a school being referred to in any plan for beautifying the city or laying out a type of site. I agree with that, but I must insist that in matters of this sort it is the educational organisation of a district which is really affected.
Therefore, I think it would be wise not to press these Amendments as they stand, but to realise that under Part III of the First Schedule—where the scheme of delegation is referred to—it should be possible to reach agreement whereby, perhaps in some cases the council, and in other cases a broader organisation involving more than one council, would be brought in and have their views considered at the right time. If we do it in that way, we are much less likely to get into a muddle than by putting these broad and sweeping Amendments into the beginning of the Bill. That, I think, is the right way to consider it. Therefore, I hope that my hon. and learned Friend and his supporters will not press this Amendment or their point of view at this stage. The only other matter which I have not mentioned is that the suggestion of my hon. and learned Friend does actually limit the freedom which the Minister is allowed to prescribe the manner of publication. I should rather leave the Minister the general right to prescribe in the sense in which it is described in the Clause, rather than limit it in the way that has been suggested. That general right does not altogether preclude bringing the local authorities into this matter.

Sir John Mellor: I am sorry my right hon. Friend will not accept this Amendment. After all, the district councils are responsible authorities and will not make frivolous objections about matters which affect people within their districts. I do not think my right hon. Friend need fear that if this Amendment is accepted the action taken by district councils will cause embarrassment. I

know the concern we all feel to ensure that the district councils should feel that they are not being left out of the picture. They have felt rather sore at the terms in which this Bill has been drafted, and I think my right hon. Friend could give us this point without running any risk of disadvantageous consequences.

Mr. Lipson: I do not think the Minister meant to suggest that local councils would make any frivolous objections but that the machinery he envisaged was adequate to deal with the situation. Personally, I was convinced by my right hon. Friend's argument.

Mr. Hutchinson: I am disappointed that my right hon. Friend has not been able to meet us. However, I appreciate the force of what he said and I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Parker: I beg to move, in page 10, line 8, to leave out "three months," and to insert "one month."
The Clause as at present drawn will lead to too many delays in getting a start made with the actual building of schools. I would like to ask the Minister exactly what is the average length of time at present between the first publication of notice of plans of a school and the actual cutting of the first sod in order to start building? It seems to me that one month would be quite long enough in which to have inquiries made and objections lodged and heard.

Mr. Messer: I want to support the Amendment, because I believe it is far more important than it appears to be on the surface. When you get public authorities to do a job it is customary to find them taking the maximum time allowed under regulations or an Act of Parliament. I cannot see why more than a month should be required for this purpose, because this is not a matter which requires a long, exhaustive examination before there are objections. If it was a question involving long-drawn out negotiations, research and consultation with many interests one could understand it, but here all that is required could, I think, be done in the space of a month. When the Bill comes into operation I want to see its provisions speeded up. There is a tendency in some quarters at the moment to be rather cynical as to


when it will become operative, and I think that in this matter we ought to show our good intentions.

Sir George Schuster: I support the Amendment. I have been looking through the Bill to find what provisions there are in it which will help to speed things up, but I cannot find any. If the Minister would accept this Amendment, if he would make a gesture, it would have an important psychological effect.

Mr. Lindsay: I, too, support the Amendment, and I would also ask what is the time between the publication of notice and the cutting of the first sod. I know there are a number of processes, but no doubt they could be telescoped to some extent.

Mr. Moelwyn Hughes: I support the Amendment for the reason given by the Parliamentary Secretary in replying to me on a previous Amendment which was negatived. The Parliamentary Secretary emphasised particularly the local application of the Sub-section we are now considering. Obviously the more local the application the more readily everybody concerned will be informed of the proposals when they are published. If this Sub-section is designed to achieve the object which the Parliamentary Secretary said it was designed to achieve, then there is no reason whatever for three months' delay. A month is an appropriate and generous period, and I hope the Amendment will be accepted.

Mr. Ede: I would remind the Committee that some local education authorities meet only once in three months. There is no statutory obligation on them to meet more frequently. Some county councils, which are local education authorities, do meet more frequently, but there are many which do not. They are the bodies which will have the right of making the objections. We are exceedingly anxious to secure that the Bill shall be speeded up, and if the Amendment is not pressed at this stage we will see whether, between now and the Report stage, it is possible to suggest a shorter time than three months for making objections. We have, however, to take account of the statutory position of the local education authorities that do not meet more frequently.

Mr. Lipson: Is the Parliamentary Secretary really putting forward as a serious argument against the weighty arguments which have been advanced in favour of this Amendment the suggestion that county councils meet only once in three months? There is nothing to prevent them having a special meeting at any time. I was hoping that the Parliamentary Secretary would welcome this evidence that the Committee were anxious to get the Bill implemented as quickly as possible. By prolonging the time beyond the month you are only storing up trouble for yourself by objections being made to perfectly reasonable proposals.

Mr. Ede: I had hoped that the words I used would have indicated that we were taking this Amendment very seriously, and that we desired to meet the views of the Committee. As I have said, between now and the next stage of the Bill we will see whether a shorter period can be substituted. No doubt the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Mr. Lipson) is, like myself, a member of a county council, and he will know the joy with which members receive notice of a special meeting. He can imagine the comments that would be made if members were merely called together to endorse an objection to a proposal by voluntary managers to erect a voluntary school.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Mr. Henry Brooke: I beg to move, in page 10, line 19, at the end, to insert:
Provided that, if it is proved to the satisfaction of the Minister that a large number of parents are anxious that their children should attend a school as to which proposals have been submitted under subsection (2) of this section and that the funds for its erection will be forthcoming the Minister shall approve the proposal with such modifications as aforesaid.

Mr. Stokes: On a point of Order. May I ask, Mr. Williams, are you not calling the Amendment in page 10 line 19 in the name of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for the Exchange Division of Liverpool (Sir J. Shute)?

The Deputy-Chairman (Mr. Charles Williams): The Amendment which has been selected is that in the name of the hon. Member for West Lewisham (Mr. Brooke).

Mr. Stokes: We were given to understand that the Amendment in the name of my hon. and gallant Friend was to be called.

The Deputy-Chairman: I am sorry, but I cannot help that. The point has already been discussed on a previous Clause and, anyhow, the hon. and gallant Member's Amendment has not been selected.

Mr. Brooke: The Amendment I have moved is designed to give the Minister some guidance as to the decision he should take when proposals for the erection of a new school are submitted to him under the provisions of Sub-section (2) of this Clause, that is, proposals for an auxiliary school. The Committee will remember that the Government brought forward an Amendment of their own to Clause 8 which laid it down that local authorities, in drawing up their development plan, must have regard, among other things, to the wishes of parents. This Amendment corresponds with that Government Amendment, but on the higher plane, because the Government, having laid down that guidance for local authorities, are now, if they do not accept this Amendment, leaving the position quite open as to how a future Minister will use the power given to him in Sub-section (4). The Minister receives the proposals for a new auxiliary school, and he receives all the objections and comments. How does he act? So long as we have the present Minister in office I think the whole Committee would agree that he will act with perfect fairness and justice. But we have, throughout this Bill, to remember that the words, "the Minister," will not always mean my right hon. Friend. We might have a Minister peculiarly friendly to denominational schools, who would accept all proposals for new auxiliary denominational schools. On the other hand, we might have a Minister peculiarly hostile, who might refuse to accept any of the proposals that were passed to him. The Committee ought not to let this passage in the Bill go by with such complete liberty to the Minister in his future decisions. I hope, therefore, that my right hon. Friend will be ready to accept this Amendment, which would require him and his successors to have regard to the wishes of a large number of parents in an area, where it was proposed that a new auxiliary school should be built.

Sir P. Hannon: I support the Amendment. I agree that, if we could have the present President of the Board of Education in office in perpetuity these matters need not be more closely defined in the text of the Bill. We live however in the world of politics with its varying phases in our national life. I think my hon. Friend has established a case which ought to receive the sympathetic consideration of the Minister. On the Second Reading I said I hoped he would indicate at some time during the progress of the Bill through Committee, what machinery he proposed to set up to ascertain the views of parents in relation to the whole question of new and existing schools. This point puts that in its correct place in the Bill. I hope the Amendment will be accepted.

Mr. Butler: The motives of the Amendment are, no doubt, above reproach, as also I believe, according to hon. Members who have spoken, is the record which they ascribe to me. For that I am grateful, but it is somewhat difficult to include these words. The Amendment requires that when the Minister is satisfied that a large number of parents are desirous that their children should attend a school for which proposals have been submitted and that funds will be forthcoming he shall approve the proposal. That is a very general and vague matter to put into this Clause. No attempt is made to define what a large number of parents means. I anticipate the very greatest difficulty, if these words were inserted, in ascertaining what constitutes a large number of parents at a particular time.
Take a village or town with, say, 400 children. Where does "a large number of parents" begin or end? Is it going to be made less easy to establish one school which will just cover those 400 children, because a large number of parents desire to give a particular type of education to 200 or 300 of the children? It is for practical reasons of that kind that I find it impossible to accept the Amendment. But that does not mean that the wishes of the parent are going to be omitted from consideration in the Clause. There was a Government Amendment to Clause 8 (b), under which the duty is imposed on the local authority to bear particularly in mind the wishes of the parent, as far as is compatible with the need for providing efficient instruction and training


and the avoidance of unreasonable expense. There it is laid as a general duty on the authority to make provision to enable pupils to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents.
My hon. Friend who spoke last was anxious about how far, within the detail of the Bill, we could introduce machinery to ensure that the wishes of the parents are carried out. The answer to that is that the general duty which has been put in so important a Clause as 8 will pervade the whole Bill. I have made inquiries since we inserted that provision in Clause 8 and I should advise the Committee to rely much more upon the general provision than upon a particular provision here. When I was asked whether I could guarantee that in every case everything would work out exactly right for everyone, I said I thought that unlikely. We could only hope that there would be a more general consideration of the parents' wishes than appeared when the Bill was first drafted. That seems to me to be exactly the position here. I could not guarantee that everything is going to be exactly right everywhere but I can say that, thanks to the Amendment the Government have inserted, the position under Clause 12 will have been improved on what it was before, and I think my hon. Friends can rely rather more on the provision we have already included in Clause 8 than upon this rather too generous form of wording. I am afraid I cannot accept these words.

Sir P. Hannon: On the Report stage, will my right hon. Friend put it in a more definite form, in the text of the Bill?

Mr. Butler: I do not think it will be necessary to put it in this Clause. Throughout the Bill I shall certainly reserve the right to examine every issue in the light of the discussion but I cannot guarantee that in this Clause we shall find it necessary.

Mr. Gallaeher: If there are three parents with 10 children each, and 10 parents with two children each, are the 10 parents with 20 children a large body of parents, or are the parents with 30 children a large body?

Mr. Brooke: The hon. Member has successfully reinforced the plea of the Minister that the phrase "a large number

of parents" contains an element of vagueness. I appreciate what my right hon. Friend has said, though I do not think he has met my point, because, although the Bill is binding on local authorities to regard the wishes of parents, the Minister is still left free. I hope he will consider whether some words can be introduced which will influence the conduct of future Ministers in this respect.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."

Colonel Sir John Shute: As my Amendment to this Clause was not called, may I say that while one realised that a long discussion had taken place on the basic idea underlying it on Clause 10, I should have hoped to get some reply on the question of new schools that may be promoted, or schools which it had been decided to abandon, where opposition has been formulated against such proposals.

The Deputy-Chairman: Is not the hon. and gallant Gentleman, speaking on Clause 12, referring rather much to Clause 10?

Sir J. Shute: I am referring to Clause 12. I should desire the Minister to give the same consideration to my point on this Clause as he gave, on Clause 10, to the question of new schools.

Mr. Butler: My hon. and gallant Friend has raised a point, on which he feels some anxiety that, if there are objections, an inquiry may be held. I believe that what he had in mind was that, if there were any objections outstanding, ipso facto the matter should be held up and an inquiry should take place. We regard that as being a very dilatory procedure because, without intending it, he has fallen into this position, that one outstanding objection would hold up the matter and necessitate an inquiry. He is perhaps more anxious than he need be. My general answer is that there is a special Clause, 86, regarding inquiries and, in the event of some of the elaborate provisions of Clause 12 not being satisfactory to an aggrieved person, there is always a chance of the Minister employing Clause 86 and I do not doubt that, if circumstances justified it, he would do so. That is why we have a special Clause on the subject of inquiries.
I hope my hon. and gallant Friend will realise that there is not so much need to be anxious. He is probably anxious about the case where a school, which is not an auxiliary school, is set up and there is some objection by those who prefer an auxiliary school. But, similarly, there might be a case in which an auxiliary school is set up and people would object who did not want an auxiliary school. The Amendment in his name would cut both ways and it might not be as satisfactory as he supposes. I prefer to leave the question more open and I think my hon. and gallant Friend will find that the Clause as drafted is a good one. We have had objections that the procedure in the Clause is too elaborate. It is said that the procedure for people to express themselves is more elaborate in this Clause, than in any other Clause in the Bill. Therefore, there is less reason to mention an inquiry here than in any other part of the Bill.

Mr. Stokes: Do I understand the right hon. Gentleman to say that he does not want frivolous objections? To that I entirely agree. There should be no dilatory proceedings. But does he mean that, where objections are substantial, from responsible people, and they are not withdrawn, it is the intention of the Minister to hold a local inquiry?

Mr. Butler: I can give no absolute undertaking of that sort. I have said that the Bill is so drafted that it is possible for the Minister to hold an inquiry
for the purpose of the exercise of any of his functions under this Act.
It will be possible, therefore, to have an inquiry under Clause 12.

Question, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill," put, and agreed to.

CLAUSE 13.—(Restrictions on discontinuance of auxiliary schools by managers and governors.)

Mr. Butler: I beg to move, in page 10, line 44, to leave out "construction" and to insert "establishment."
This is largely a drafting Amendment. "Establishment" is a wider word than "construction" and has been used in other parts of the Bill. On re-examining the Clause after our last discussion we

discovered that it was advisable to make this Amendment.

Amendment agreed to.

Further Amendment made: In page 10, line 46, after "local", insert "education authority or fonner."—[Mr. Butler.]

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill."

Mr. Moelwyn Hughes: Is the Amendment in my name—in page 10, line 48, at end, to insert:
and in such manner such as by transfer of the land or buildings of the school as he thinks just
—not to be called?

The Deputy-Chairman: No, it is not selected and we have got to the Question, "That the Clause stand part of the Bill."

Mr. Hughes: I do not propose to discuss the Amendment but to discuss the Clause and one of its patent deficiencies. This is a Clause which deals with the discontinuance of auxiliary schools. It does not deal with their discontinuance at the moment when this Bill comes into operation. This Clause will exist in the general system of education as long as the Act is in force, and I do not think that the Committee realises what it provides. In the Bill there are extensive and generous measures to provide not only for bringing up to date auxiliary schools, that is, denominational schools, but for subventions towards making them up to date. They will to a large extent depend for their lives upon the continuance of the denomination of the school. My Roman Catholic friends would not desire to maintain a Roman Catholic school in, say, the Scotland Road district of Liverpool after all the population had been moved out to the suburbs and Scotland Road had a different kind of population altogether. If they discontinued their schools and playing fields, which have been provided very largely out of public funds, they would have there valuable sites and buildings. If they discontinue there are special provisions to enable them, on a transfer of population, to receive assistance elsewhere towards getting the new buildings and playing fields. Public money will come to provide almost everything they need in the other area.
What happens to the buildings and the sites which they have left? The only


remedy provided in this Clause is a so-called monetary remedy. The authority will decide how much public money has gone to the land and buildings. The authority may agree on a figure. There is no provision that the figure shall bear any relation to the amount of public money that has gone into the schools. I can well imagine the local education authority saying, "The trustees have not very much money and we might as well accept a meagre compromise." If they cannot agree, they go to the Minister, who, under this Clause, will have to say what the amount shall be. The trustees may not be possessed of any funds. They have no resources and they cannot be sued in their individual capacities. They can only be sued as trustees, and they may for this purpose be pure men of straw. There is a valuable property, almost entirely created by public funds, and there is no recourse except against men of straw. Would it not be reasonable for the Minister to say that, if the trustees have not any money, the public interest could be satisfied by transferring the land or building or part of them to some public purpose, so that the public will get back some of the money it has expended?

Mr. Linstead: I wonder whether the Parliamentary Secretary could satisfy me on a point with regard to Sub-section (3). Two years' notice has to be given if an auxiliary school is to be discontinued, and one understands why that should be the case. If it is a successful school there will be no difficulty in maintaining it for two years after the proprietors have come to the conclusion that they must give it up. On the other hand, if the school is unsuccessful, it is likely that the proprietors will be unable to give the two years' notice. Yet, in the case of the unsuccessful school, which cannot give the notice, it is to be taken over by the local education authority free of charge for the remainder of the period. Therefore, the very people who can least afford that an authority should have it free of charge will be penalised. Could not some payment be made by way of rent for the unexpired period?

Mr. Ede: I will deal first with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Mr. Linstead). These schools are not conducted as commercial ventures. There is no financial advantage to be

gained by the managers or governors of auxiliary schools in running the schools. This Sub-section was designed to deal with such a case as that which came within my own knowledge. A body of voluntary managers decided that they did not want to run their school any longer. Under the existing law they had to give 18 months' notice of their intention to discontinue. They gave the notice, and at the end of six months got tired of waiting for the notice to expire. They wrote to the local education authority and said, "We propose to close the school on a certain day." The authority, which was engaged in finding alternative provision, was faced with the fact that if the school was closed there would be children in the streets with nowhere to go for education. What Subsection (3) says is that in future, if, during the period when the notice is running out, the managers get tired of waiting for its expiration, the local education authority can carry on the school in the building in which it has always been carried on, thus enabling them to continue to educate the children while making arrangements for the erection of a suitable new school. It was designed to deal with a practical difficulty which has arisen in administration. It is the only way in which one can be fair to the children whose education is at stake.
When we come to the point raised by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Carmarthen (Mr. M. Hughes), I do not think that there is the danger of things happening that he fears. The managers for some reason or other want to discontinue the school. If any money has been spent by the local education authority or the Board of Education on the school, the managers, (before they can serve a notice, have to satisfy the Minister that they have repaid the unexhausted value of the improvements that have been effected in the school.

Mr. Moelwyn Hughes: In cash?

Mr. Ede: Presumably in cash. If they cannot find the cash they cannot give the notice, and the school must continue. Therefore, I do not think the dangers that my hon. and learned Friend foresaw really arise. This is a case where the managers want to discontinue the school because, for some reason or other, they are no longer anxious to carry it on. In future this is less likely to happen than it has been in the past. In the main,


I think, where an aided school is unable to carry on they will ask, not that the school shall be discontinued, but that it should be transferred from aided to controlled status. Where a school is of controlled status I should have thought it was very unlikely that there would be any desire on the part of the managers to discontinue. If they do desire to continue a controlled school, they may be faced with a heavy financial liability and will be unable during the next 30 or 40 years to contemplate serving the notice.

Mr. Ivor Thomas: My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Carmarthen (Mr. M. Hughes) has all the capacity of his profession for making the worse appear the better reason, allied to which he has all the eloquence of a Non-Conformist preacher, and at times I was almost persuaded that he was right. Surely the answer to him is very simple. If the managers are unable to find the money that is required, the Minister will not grant leave. Therefore, the question does not arise. Nevertheless I think that a few additional words are needed on the Clause. My hon. and learned Friend has given the impression that large sums of public money have been spent on the construction of denominational schools. Someone ought to point out, and it cannot be done too often, that the Church for 12 centuries provided almost the only form of education in this country.

The Deputy-Chairman: The hon. Gentleman certainly cannot call attention to it often here.

Mr. Thomas: If these buildings had not been made available for the use of the children of the country generally the public funds would have had to bear an expenditure of many more million pounds than has actually been the case.

Mr. McEntee: The Minister has said that if the managers desire to close a school, and if there is some outstanding debt which they cannot meet, they will not be able to give notice. I presume that if they want to close the school there is some good reason, and if, because there is an outstanding debt, they cannot give notice, what is the position of the school and the children?

Sir J. Shute: My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Carmarthen (Mr. M. Hughes) has mentioned the city I

represent, and I only desire to say that he chose a bad example of a school which was making money out of public funds. Every penny to build the schools in the Scotland Road district was found by the poor people who lived in the locality.

Mr. Hughes: rose—

The Deputy-Chairman: I think that both sides in this discussion are getting away from the point.

Mr. Ede: I am almost tempted to rush into the defence of the hon. and learned Member for Carmarthen (Mr. M. Hughes), but I will only answer the point put by the hon. Member for West Walthamstow (Mr. McEntee). The school is being discontinued and is presumably required by the local education authority for the education of the children in the area. If it is discontinued, the authority will have to replace it. It is only fair, therefore, that, if it is to be replaced in that way, the managers, who have received public money to bring the school, of which they are getting tired, up to date, should refund to the public the unexhausted value of the improvements which have been affected in their school at the cost of the public. Only in that way can we secure that local authorities will be willing to spend some of this money. Clearly they cannot be expected to put a school into good condition as a controlled school and then allow the managers to say, "Now we have a fine building we will cease to maintain the school as a school inside the State system and will run it as a private school outside the State system, charging fees in a building which has been built at the expense of the State or of the municipality." It is against that that we have to protect the public and it seems to me that this arrangement is completely fair to both sides.

Mr. McEntee: I agree with what my hon. Friend has said, but the reason why the managers desire to close may be a financial one. They may owe money, and be in such a bad financial position as to be unable to carry on. What would be their position? They might say: "If you won't allow us to give the two years' notice, we shall be unable to carry on and we cannot pay our teachers' fees."

Mr. Ede: That can only arise in the case of an aided school. Their proper request


then would be to be transferred from aided to controlled status. From the moment they became a controlled school—

Mr. Cove: What is a controlled school?

Mr. Ede: rose—

The Deputy-Chairman: The explanation can only be given in its proper place.

Mr. Ede: In the case I was putting, the whole of the expenses of maintaining the school, both its running costs and the costs of keeping the building in repair, would fall upon the local education authority. There is no question, therefore, after accepting controlled status, of their getting into a financial position in which they could not carry on the school.

Mr. Moelwyn Hughes: What is the provision of the Bill which secures that on the default of the managers or governors, the aided school automatically becomes a controlled school?

Mr. Ede: I did not say it automatically became a controlled school. I said that they would apply to become a controlled school. That is the obligation placed on them in the Bill, not in this Clause but in the appropriate Clause.

Mr. Denville: Is the Minister perfectly satisfied that, if a school be unable to pay its way through no fault of its own, there will, under this Clause, be no pressure of an intimidating nature to get the school into a position in which it cannot be run? It might be that the school would be forced into that position but it would not seek to close of its own volition. Is there any machinery by which that could be prevented?

Mr. Ede: This is not the Clause under which that would be done, but is one where managers of their own volition want to discontinue a school. I am bound to say that I think it is very unlikely in the future to arise, because managers in the main will be asking to be transferred from aided to controlled status. The obligation on them to do that is to be found in Clause 14 (4), under which, if they cannot meet their obligations, the duty is placed on them to apply—

The Deputy-Chairman: Now we are anticipating Clause 14.

Question, "That the Clause, as amended, stand part of the Bill," put, and agreed to.

CLAUSE 14.—(Classification of auxiliary schools as controlled schools, aided schools, or special agreement schools.)

Mr. C. Davies: I beg to move, in page 11, line 45, after the first "school," to insert:
and provided that there is not a county school available within reasonable distance the Order shall direct that the school shall be a controlled school.
This is one of the most important Amendments we have yet been called upon to discuss. The Committee will see that we are now seeking to deal with cases not of publicly provided schools but of the privately provided schools which we call auxiliary schools. They are divided by the Clause into three classes: controlled, aided, and special agreement schools. The Amendment proposes that, where there is no county school within a reasonable distance of the children's home, the auxiliary school which it is proposed shall be continued shall be a controlled school. A very pertinent question was put by an hon. Member a moment or two ago, in which he asked for a definition of controlled schools. They are not really defined in the Bill but, by a process of elimination, we can get at what a controlled school is. It is a school where the whole of the money is provided out of public funds. Once the school has become controlled, the managers shall then, in the majority, be publicly elected and appointed. Here follows the necessity for the Amendment.
We are approaching this matter in a rather calm atmosphere. Had I been in this Committee 42 years ago, when this major question was being discussed, I wonder what atmosphere would have been present. It is necessary for me to refer to one or two matters in connection with this aspect. At the time when the Measure of 1902 was passed, there were, roughly, 14,275 schools which had been established by the Church of England. None of us can ever sufficiently acknowledge our debt to the people who established those schools, and I agree with the hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. I. Thomas) as to that acknowledgment, but we should not so worship our ancestors that we do not want to see any changes. Since then, in spite of the great assistance that was given by the Act of 1902 to those schools, the number has fallen to 10,553.
Without a doubt, the number has fallen much lower than that, as, unfortunately,


tunately, many of the schools do not provide those amenities for the children that ought to be provided. Many of them undoubtedly will have to be closed. The estimate has been made that something like two-thirds will have to come down. Be that as it may, out of that 10,553 there are over 4,000 which are the only schools in their particular areas, which are what we know as the single-school areas. They have provided the only form of elementary education for the children within those areas, and the children have had to attend them as denominational schools, although their own parents belonged to another denomination. That is an injustice. I cannot imagine anything more harmful to a child than to have the denominational teaching of the home and the parents questioned by the denominational teaching of the school which it attends. Religious denominational teaching in itself is a very big problem for the child mind.

Earl Winterton: My hon. and learned Friend will, of course, take into account the interesting fact that, in the country as a whole, only some 15 per cent. of the parents belong to any denomination.

Mr. Davies: That is a very sad estimate.

Earl Winterton: It is true.

Mr. Davies: It may be. I am only expressing my view as to how it affects those who do belong to a denomination.

Earl Winterton: I quite agree.

Mr. Davies: At any rate, we do know that this is an injustice, and, if I may quote His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, who recently acknowledged that injustice and hoped that something would be done to ease it—

Mr. Brooke: This statement about the Archbishop of Canterbury has now been made three times in this Committee. Before it is made again, would the hon. and learned Member who intends to usé it, obtain the actual words which the Archbishop said?

Mr. Cove: Where can we get them?

Mr. Davies: The words which I have only go as far as an exhortation to the teachers in these schools to be sympathetic and kind to the Nonconformist children.

Mr. Brooke: Would the hon. and learned Member give me the date when that was said?

Mr. Davies: I am sorry, I really cannot, I only wish I could.

Mr. Cove: If the hon. Member who interrupted has the quotation, why does he not enlighten the Committee? This is a very serious matter.

Mr. Brooke: On a point of Order. I have not got the quotation. I submit that if an hon. Member comes to this Committee quoting words used by someone who is not a Member of the House of Commons he should be able to quote those words precisely.

The Deputy-Chairman: That is not actually a point of Order.

Mr. Davies: In the single-school areas, of which there are more than 4,000, there is a religious atmosphere which—I am anxious to use the tenderest words I can—is not fully acceptable to the parents of the children who are compelled to attend those schools. We are embarking on a rational system of education. Frankly, speaking far myself, but what is much more to the point, speaking on behalf of all denominations who call themselves the Free Churches of this country, I say they would like to have had the complete abolition of the dual system, and to put in the hands of the State, the whole cost and the control. They have not insisted upon their point of view to the extent of opposing this Bill, although they are so anxious about the whole situation. But let it not be thought for a moment that the Nonconformist conscience is even slumbering. This Committee heard a great deal about it in the great controversies of 1902, but we are anxious for this Measure to be passed and to give the fullest possible education to the children of this country. That is why we are anxious to see it through with as little injustice as possible.
We feel that if this Amendment is accepted the position will then be that there will be within the reach of every child, within reason, a school provided in full by the public and managed, to the extent of a majority, by those elected by the public, where there will not be a compulsory denominational atmosphere contrary to the atmosphere to which the


child is accustomed in his home. Surely that is the greatest distance you could have expected the Nonconformists to go. They want every child, whatever its denomination, to be given the best possible education, and not compelled to suffer from being what I may call segregated from the others. It is a matter on which I feel deeply—that the little children in the denominational schools should be divided into their particular denominations. It must leave not only a feeling of bewilderment in their little minds but may cause, in the case of a minority, even a feeling of inferiority, a feeling that there is something peculiar about them. It is that which we are anxious to avoid.
I will leave the question of the teachers to my hon. Friends who, I am sure, will be following me. I have tried to put my case as emphatically as I can, but without wishing to injure anyone's feelings whatever they may be. Let me refer to one or two figures in passing. The Noble Lord referred to the few who unfortunately belong to any religious denomination, but I think in Wales and along the Border the proportion must be far higher. I shall, therefore, content myself by referring to figures along the Border. The county of Shropshire, which is the one adjacent to my own, and is one of the greatest and most beautiful counties in England or Wales, is of so fruitful an agricultural type that it has naturally attracted the poor people from the hills of Wales. In the main the people of Wales are Nonconformists, a preponderance so overwhelming that Parliament passed a special Act with regard to Wales and dis-established and disendowed the English Church there. They are pouring over the Border into Shropshire.
What is the position in all the counties of which I have got particulars, and I have particulars here of seven? Shropshire is the one that stands highest in the proportion of Church of England schools to the total schools. The proportion in Shropshire is as high as 76 per cent. One can be certain that into the bulk of that 76 per cent. goes a very large number of children belonging to some denomination other than that of the Church of England. The other figures are very near to this proportion: Oxford, 75 per cent., West Suffolk, 72 per cent., East and West Sussex, 72 per cent. I do not know these counties or their position as well as I know Shropshire. That being the position, might we

appeal to the generosity of this Committee, on behalf of those people who have now for generation after generation been compelled to suffer injustice, to take this simple easy step which will remove it once and for all and put all on a proper equality.

Mr. Ivor Thomas: My hon. and learned Friend has taken our minds back to "old, unhappy far-off things and battles long ago," but he has done it in a manner very different from the spirit of 1902, and I am sure it is one which those of us who are communicants of the Church of England will desire to reciprocate. I feel a number of difficulties about his Amendment. The first is one which I feel sure would be pointed out in any case by the Minister. It is a purely drafting one. I am surprised that two of my hon. and learned Friends have put down an Amendment which would introduce a contradiction into the Clause. Under the Clause, if the managers are able to satisfy certain conditions the Minister is to make an order directing that the school shall be an aided school; but without any alteration in this provision, the Amendment introduces another set of conditions under which the Minister is to direct that the school shall become a controlled school. But that drafting difficulty could, of course, be got over at a later stage, and I do not dwell on that.
I would like to come to the principle in the matter. In these 4,000 single-school areas Nonconformists have undoubtedly been suffering from an injustice, and it is one which those of us who speak, whether officially or unofficially, for the Church of England would like to meet. My hon. and learned Friend will believe me when I say that some of us who are members of the Church of England have discussed this matter informally and we would very much like to do all that can be done to meet our hon. Friends in this matter. I believe the difficulties can be met by arranging for transport and so on—

Mr. Cove: How?

Mr. Thomas: I do not wish to dwell on that now, but I wish to record the conviction that it can be done. We are willing as far as we possibly can to meet them in that matter. We shall naturally wish to have an opportunity to meet them—

Mr. Cove: You cannot solve that question outside this Committee. I would like to know what practical scheme the hon. Member has got for transport.

Mr. Thomas: I would welcome an opportunity of discussing that with my hon. Friend.

Mr. Magnay: Who gave the hon. Member authority on behalf of the Church of England? Is he at liberty to deal with a matter like this? What does he actually mean about it?

Mr. Thomas: The hon. Member could not have listened very carefully or he would have known that I made no claim to speak for the Church of England. I claim only to speak for myself and hon. Friends in this Committee with whom I have been discussing the matter. I certainly do not speak for the Church of England officially, but I know the mind of that Church—

Hon. Members: Oh.

Mr. Denville: Really if the hon. Member knows the mind of any Church he is marvellous.

Mr. Thomas: I have admitted there is an injustice in this matter which ought to be met, and within the Rules of Order all I can discuss is the particular method of remedying that injustice which is proposed by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Davies) and his associates. The great difficulty I see about this Amendment is that in remedying the injustice suffered by Nonconformists he would introduce a new injustice for members of the Anglican Church, for he would merely invert the position. I do not believe that these injustices are so great as he represents. I should deplore it very much indeed if it were the case, as he said, that teachers in Church schools questioned the denominational teaching given in the homes. I hope the position is that teachers in the Church schools expound the positive teaching given in the Church Catechism and not go out of their way to question the religious faith of people who differ from the Anglican Church. But be that as it may, whether the injustices exist or not there is a sense of injustice and that is undoubtedly what matters. Whether there is substance for it or not, Nonconformists feel that there

is an injustice. The Amendment would merely invert the position, for it means that in single-school areas in future the children of Church of England parents would have to accept the teaching given in the controlled school. The hon. and learned Member may think us very unreasonable but many of us parents—

Mr. Cove: Is it not a fact that the Church of England has accepted the agreed syllabus? What grievance have they after that?

Mr. Thomas: If my hon. Friend had allowed me I was about to say that a very large number of us parents who are members of the Church of England would find ourselves quite unable in conscience to send our children to schools where the teaching is conducted on the basis of the agreed syllabus.

Mr. Cove: Am I not right in saying that the Church of England has officially accepted—

The Deputy-Chairman: I must point out that we are not discussing the agreed syllabus.

Mr. Thomas: My hon. Friend is now falling into the error of the hon. Member for Gateshead (Mr. Magnay) in supposing that I am speaking for the Church of England. I cannot make it plainer that I am not doing anything of the sort, but that I am representing the views of a very large number of parents in the Church of England who cannot in conscience accept the agreed syllabus which would be given in the controlled schools. That is why I say that the Amendment would merely invert the position. Instead of Nonconformist parents suffering—

It being the hour appointed for the consideration of Opposed Private Business, and there being Private Business set down by direction of the Chairman of Ways and Means, under Standing Order No. 6, further Proceeding was postponed without Question put.

Orders of the Day — ANGLESEY COUNTY COUNCIL (WATER, ETC.) BILL [By Order]

Order for Second Reading read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Mr. Speaker: In calling the Amendment, which is perhaps a little unusual, I have taken note of the exceptional circumstances which exist now, and I am going to allow a rather wider Debate than is normally permitted. I am taking into consideration the fact that Private Members have not the chance of raising such matters by a Private Member's Motion. I hope that the Debate will not go too wide. We are discussing two local Bills, and their relation to a national scheme should be borne in mind. This must not be taken as a precedent.

Mr. Levy: I beg to move, to leave out from "That," to the end of the Question, and to add:
this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Bill, on the ground that it is undesirable that further powers should be given to individual water undertakings until such a time as legislation has been passed dealing with the national water resources.
I would like, with your permission, Sir, first to make a personal statement. It has come to my knowledge that a number of hon. Members are apparently under the impression that I have some interests in water undertakings. I would like to say at once that I have no such interests, financial or otherwise. Whatever I have done in regard to water has been done in the national interest.
A number of hon. and right hon. Members will remember that as long ago as 1931 and 1932, in the last Parliament, I advocated a national water plan and a national water supply for the whole country. You cannot have a national water plan and a national water supply unless you link it up with a sewerage and a drainage scheme. No local authority or private undertaking, or combination of local authorities or undertakings, is capable of providing this country with an adequate water supply and drainage system, unless it is dealt with by the Government in a national water plan. In 1933 I put before this House what I considered to be a constructive plan for a national water supply. That plan was that this country should be geographically divided into watershed areas; that there should be a national water board, and also a regional control over all the various watershed areas, and each of the controllers should be responsible for providing an efficient water supply for the whole of his area, as well as drainage. The regional controllers were to be responsible

not only for the adequate and efficient supply of water throughout their areas and for the drainage but for the creation of reservoirs, in order to conserve the water, to enable them to have the supply which is necessary, because the water resources of this country at present are quite insufficient to give a tap-water supply throughout the whole country unless we conserve the water. I divided the years into the wet seasons and the dry seasons. In the wet season you get waterless houses in the midst of waterlogged territory. When I was touring some of the waterless districts in 1934 I said to one gentleman, "What is your position here with regard to water?" He said, "In the summer I have a river at the bottom of the garden, and in the winter I have a garden at the bottom of the river." All that water went to waste.
I am of opinion that the Minister of Reconstruction should have the control of water supplies in this country. What is the use of talking about rebuilding houses, location of industry, dispersal of the population, without any water? What is the use of building houses and insisting that every house shall have a bathroom, with no water? What is the use of an Education Bill, to educate the people in hygiene, if when they go home there is no water? What is the use of a Health Bill? What is the essential for good health? It is cleanliness; and how can you have cleanliness without an ample supply of water? Of all the commodities that we use, only two have not got a standard of purity: one is water, and the other is milk. I ask hon. Members not to confuse a standard of purity for milk with the fatty content. After all, milk is 87 per cent. water. In the rural areas you see cattle standing up to their knees in putrid and stagnant water, excreting in it, discharging their urine in it. That is the water they have to drink. Thousands of dairy farmers cannot get a Grade A certificate for their milk because there is no water to wash the utensils, and no water to wash the cattle. Why is it that the Government are endeavouring to insist on the pasteurisation of milk? Simply because there is no purity standard for milk. Why do they not have a purity standard for water? Because they are afraid; they dare not. If you had a purity standard for water to-day nearly all your service wells would be condemned, and a number of urban


supplies even would be condemned. Therefore, a national water supply is essential.
The other day several hon. Members said to me, "If you advocate a national water plan for water supply, which obviously cannot be dissociated from sewerage and drainage, it is going to cost a colossal amount of money." To-day your water supply is patchwork, haphazard, piecemeal, overlapping. There never has been a plan. In 1933 and 1934, when I made speeches galore on water supply, I took a lot of trouble in research, going back over the records of the last 80 years. There have been innumerable Committees set up to report on water; there have been innumerable Royal Commissions set up with regard to water. All have been set up in order that the Governments of the day could sidestep the issue; and they have sidestepped the issue. For the last 70 or 80 years nothing comprehensive has been done. I am not attacking the Minister of Health personally, because he is new to the job, and I believe he is going to do what he can. But I am attacking the Ministry of Health—and I will attack them more severely in a minute—because they have done nothing for the last 70 or 80 years with regard to water supply.
Let me call attention to the great potential dangers in swimming pools, both those in the open air and those which are covered. I make this statement with a full sense of responsibility as a Member of Parliament, and I am bringing a grave charge against the Ministry of Health. Before 1914, all swimming pools were cleansed by what I shall describe as the fill-and-empty system. The pools were cleansed when they were empty; and they were emptied and filled sometimes once, sometimes twice, a week. But the water supply is such that there is not the 100,000 or 150,000 gallons which is necessary to fill the baths. What did the Ministry of Health do? They made by-laws. These by-laws are a disgrace and a scandal. They provide that an open-air bath shall be filled at the beginning of the season, and the water is not changed at all until it is emptied at the end of the season. A covered bath that is open all the year round need only be cleansed once a year.
How can you clean the sides and the bottom of the bath unless you empty it? The chlorination system, which I know

quite well, is utterly incapable of properly disinfecting the water, although it passes through every six hours. People say that it does cleanse the water, but, believe me, I have been in touch with a large number of distinguished medical men, and the Medical Association will not deny the charge that I am bringing against the Ministry of Health. You have some distinguished doctors in this House of Commons. There is not one of them who would dispute what I am going to say. I have been in touch with a number of distinguished medical men, and one of them, who is outstanding, gave me the reasons why the public baths in the country to-day—and I am speaking of swimming pools—are a potential danger. So I said "I wonder whether you would be good enough to write that down for me, because all Members of Parliament, however well informed, would be pleased to know the fact with regard to this matter." He said "Yes," and with your permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to read it to hon. Members.

Mr. Speaker: I am sorry to interrupt. I said we could have a wide Debate. I presume that this is only preliminary, leading up to the Anglesey Water Bill. I have not heard the word "Anglesey" mentioned yet.

Mr. Levy: I am obliged to you, Sir, and with regard to the Ruling, would it not be true to say that everything that applies to Anglesey, equally well applies all over the country, whether we apply it to rural parts of the country or any other part? It applies all over the country. May I ask your leniency, Sir, because I consider this so important for the country as a whole that attention should be called to it? What is the use of my right hon. Friend bringing in a Bill with regard to health and nursing and medical attention when this state of affairs exists? Then, with your permission, Sir, I wish to call the Minister's attention to this matter and it is only right, if I may say so with respect, that these facts should be known. Why should we allow ordinary folk, in their ignorance and innocence, to use some of these baths, which are a potential danger to their own health?
This is what the doctor said:
The organic material in the water itself normally decomposes, you get contamination from the atmosphere, discharge of urine, some of which is infected by the bacillus coli or


even the typhoid bacillus itself, discharges from the ear, nose and throat, containing various types of germs, such as the staphylococci, and the far more dangerous streptococcus and the pneumococcus and the cold and influenza germs.
Chlorination does not kill them off.
You have also gonorrhoeal discharges and the syphilitic organisms.
This is what he finished up with:
Such is the filth that accumulates in very large quantity in a bath open for a year. Would any self-respecting person with this knowledge bathe in such a bath, whatever guarantee might be given to them with regard to the cleansing effect of chlorination?

Mr. R. C. Morrison: Will the hon. Member say exactly whose opinion that is? He has not mentioned his name.

Mr. Levy: I am not going to give the name of the doctor, because I understand it is not in accordance with the etiquette of the medical profession to do so. There are very many hon. Members in this House who are doctors, many of them very distinguished, and if they take part in this Debate, as I hope they will, I feel convinced that they will confirm it and not dispute it, but I have not the permission of the gentleman concerned to mention his name.

Mr. Morrison: Is it not unusual for an hon. Member to make such sweeping charges on the effect on health of chlorination, without stating the source of his information?

Mr. Levy: I take full responsibility for my statements without giving the name, and I consider that this House is the right place, and the only place, to state these defects in anything which any hon. Member considers to be in the national interest. I hope we are going to get a national water supply. I shall not be satisfied until we do get a national water supply. A number of our rural areas are worse than South African villages. Children are being sent to country districts from London, and a number of them suffer from stomach troubles because they have not been acclimatised to the type of water they drink. The majority of people have thought they had eaten something that disagreed with them.
I remember, years ago, taking many samples of water from surface wells. I got a medical officer of health, whose

name I will not mention, to analyse them. He said "This water ought to be condemned, but what am I to do? There is no other water." I will not detain the House any longer, except to say that the Minister is about to issue a White Paper. If that White Paper is not a national plan dealing with the whole country for a water supply correlated to drainage, then I shall be one of his most obstinate opponents. It is no use the Minister coming with a White Paper saying that he has got the consent of the Treasury to give certain grants to certain local authorities, or to private undertakings, to assist them in some more overlapping water schemes. How can it be right? My hon. Friend who sits for a Birmingham Division—

Mr. Thorne: Can the hon. Member tell us from where Birmingham gets its water supply?

An Hon. Member: Yes, Wales.

Mr. Levy: I do not come from Birmingham.

Mr. Thorne: I beg the hon. Member's pardon.

Mr. Levy: I sit for a more distinguished constituency. Unfortunately, my constituency has to rely on outside constituencies for water, although we could bore down no more than 50 feet and get our own water supply. But, under some contracts that have been made with the Ministry of Health, we are not allowed to do it and we had to look for water elsewhere. I was about to say to my hon. Friends who sit for Birmingham divisions, that they buy their water from Wales and they bring it a large number of miles through arid areas, and the areas through which their supply pipe passes have no water. I am not blaming them, I am not blaming Birmingham; I am blaming the system and preceding Governments. This country has got to have a proper national plan and a proper water supply, and, therefore, I say to my right hon. and learned Friend, who is going to issue a White Paper and who may presently be making a statement, that, if there is anything less than a national water scheme for a national water supply throughout the country, I shall criticise it as severely as lies in my power, because it will not be enough.

Mr. Hutchinson: I beg to second the Amendment.
When we put down the Amendments to this Bill and to the other Bill which is to be taken next, it was not from any desire on our part to deprive the inhabitants of Anglesey, Chesterfield or Bolsover of those supplies of water they so urgently require, but because it did seem, at that time, to be the only way in which we could ensure that this House should have an opportunity to discuss a matter which is, after all, one of very urgent national importance. At that time, it was not known that my right hon. Friend was about to present a White Paper on this subject; but, nevertheless, this Debate will serve a useful purpose, inasmuch as it will give the House an opportunity to consider now whether this piecemeal method of allocating water supplies and of appropriating water sources, represented by the two Bills now before the House, is a system which is capable of meeting the needs of the country at the present time, or whether it should not now be replaced, or, perhaps I should say, supplemented by a more comprehensive system upon a national basis. I take it that, in this discussion, we shall not be precluded from drawing attention to those features which we think such a comprehensive national system ought to possess.
It is, as my hon. Friend has already pointed out, notorious that, in certain parts of the country, the existing water supplies are insufficient to meet the needs of the population, and that, in certain areas, no proper supplies are available at all. I do not propose to dwell upon that aspect of the matter, because my hon. Friend has already dealt very fully with it. I would, however, remind the House that this was one of the matters to which the Scott Committee drew atttention in their report, and the House will find very well stated in that report the difficulties, particularly from the standpoint of rural districts, which the present inadequate use of our water resources has involved. This unfortunate state of affairs is not attributable to any lack of consideration of this subject in recent years. Going back no further than the last ten years, in the 1934–35 Session, a joint committee was appointed by Parliament on water resources and supplies with the duty to consider and report on measures for the better conservation and organisation of water resources and supplies in England

and Wales. In the following Session, a joint committee was again appointed with the same terms of reference.
Later on a departmental committee—the Central Advisory Water Committee—was appointed by my right hon. Friend's Department to consider very similar matters and to offer advice to those Government Departments who were concerned with this subject. They presented a voluminous report in the Spring of 1939, and, more recently, in August of last year, they presented a further report covering certain aspects of the matter. The House will recollect that in the last Session a Bill was introduced and reached the stage of its Second Reading—if my recollection is right, the Second Reading was moved in this House—and the Bill was then lapsed at the end of the Session. The House greeted it and then said farewell. In all this elaborate circumlocution, one is struck by the complete disparity between the volume of this industrious consideration and the action which has resulted from it. It is a fact that part of our law upon this subject still remains an Act of Parliament which was passed nearly 100 years ago. Therefore, it is not surprising that much of our law on this topic is really out of date, and needs to be brought into line with the urgent requirements of to-day.
What is perhaps an even more serious aspect of this matter appears to be that at present there exists no adequate machinery to ensure that full use is made of our existing sources of supply. My hon. Friend the Member for Elland (Mr. Levy) has said that our existing sources will prove adequate if they are properly utilised and properly conserved.

Mr. Levy: If the hon. and learned Member will forgive me, I would like to correct that statement. I said our existing water resources were entirely inadequate unless there was a better conservation of water and a reconstruction, or a further construction, of reservoirs.

Mr. Hutchinson: I am sorry if I misinterpreted what my hon. Friend said, but I do not think there is much difference of opinion between us. I understood him to say that the existing sources are sufficient as long as they are properly conserved.

Mr. Levy: I am contending that the geological survey of the water resources of


this country has proved that at present these resources are insufficient to give an adequate water supply unless further reservoirs are constructed and surface water is conserved.

Mr. Hutchinson: This aspect of the matter is very controversial and I know different experts take different views, but I think my hon. Friend and I agree that it is essential that adequate measures should be taken to conserve and to utilise properly those supplies of water which descend from the heavens, as well as those which rise up from below. I think the House will certainly agree that it is essential to ensure the full use of all those known and existing sources of water supply and that we must take adequate measures to ensure that those districts which are at present inadequately supplied or not supplied at all should be provided with a supply from those sources from which a supply can most efficiently and readily be afforded.
In the past there has been a scramble to obtain control of the existing sources of supply. That, to a very large extent, is the position at present. The existing system of promoting Private Bills has resulted in a completely haphazard method of allocating existing supplies. The question whether a particular district should be supplied from any particular source has depended under this system upon whether the inhabitants of that district had the energy or the enterprise at the time when that particular source of supply was being appropriated to ensure that a supply was afforded to their neighbourhood. It has also depended on what is perhaps an even more important consideration, whether at the time when a particular supply was being appropriated the need for water in their district existed at all.
There are many cases where a particular source of supply has been exploited by a district situated a very long distance from its source while no supply has been made available to a neighbourhood situated between the source of supply and the district exploiting that supply. That is a very common case and one which has arisen from the present system. Unless a demand existed at the time when the water source was exploited, it is very difficult for a district to obtain a supply from that source although that particular source may be the best source from which the

supply should be afforded. It really all depended in the past on whether the need existed at the time the water sources were developed and also, to some extent, whether the inhabitants came forward at the right time to ask for their supply.
I make the suggestion to my right hon. Friend that there should now be a complete survey of all existing sources of supply. That, I suggest to him and to the House, is the essential preliminary. Such a survey ought to comprise all existing sources of surface water whether at present allocated to any existing undertaking or not.

Mr. Levy: Geological and other surveys have been made ad nauseam. That has always been used as a method of sidestepping the issue. There is no reason for a survey because practically every inch of territory of these islands has been surveyed time and time again, and no action has been taken.

Mr. Hutchinson: If my hon. Friend will allow me to proceed with my argument, he will not find himself in substantial disagreement. I was about to say that the result of a survey such as I have suggested would be to put us in possession of a complete picture of the surface resources of this country. We should then be in a position to say from which particular source any particular neighbourhood ought to be, and could most efficiently be supplied. I am aware, as my hon. Friend has pointed out, that a survey of this sort has been going on for some years, and I believe that it is the case, as far as the survey of surface sources is concerned, that the Inland Water Survey undertaken by the Ministry of Health some years ago is now almost complete.

Mr. Molson: It has been interrupted for the duration of the war.

Mr. Hutchinson: It has been interrupted but I understand that the survey itself is practically complete. When that survey is complete—and we should like it to be completed soon—it ought to be followed by a complete review and reallocation of existing surface sources. It should be possible to determine in each neighbourhood the source from which the supply could most conveniently be afforded, and, having determined that, it would then be possible to decide how supplies


from that source could most conveniently be made available. As far as that part of the matter is concerned, it is not really practicable to have any universal plan, such as a national water grid. You have to take into account varying circumstances in each locality. It may be that in some cases a supply could more conveniently be afforded by tapping the trunk lines of an existing undertaking, or by taking the supply from an existing reservoir. It may be that, in other places—and this is true of some of the rural places—a supply could be more conveniently provided by pumping from underground sources either by electrical machinery or by the use of Diesel pumps; but it is impossible to say that any particular scheme would be capable of universal application. First of all, you have to determine from which particular source a particular district can most conveniently be supplied; when you have decided that essential preliminary consideration, you have to go on to consider under what conditions the supply can best be made available. Involved in that matter would be the question of what public assistance, local or national, could, or ought to be made available to set up the necessary machinery for providing the supply from the allocated source.
The survey of surface sources to which I have been referring ought also to be supplemented by a survey of underground sources. The Geological Survey at South Kensington has already made very substantial progress with their survey of underground sources. Although that work is not by any means complete, there is sufficient material already available to enable many of those sources to be used for the purpose of supplying those localities, which can be more conviently supplied from underground sources than from surface sources. Not only should a survey of surface resources be completed but it should be supplemented by a survey of underground resources based upon the existing geological survey.
I would remind my right hon. Friend that, when you come to consider the question of the use of underground sources, you are really embarking upon a new field of legislation involving the control of the utilisation of underground sources by private individuals. In this country we have had very little experience of dealing with

that particular matter, but it is a subject which is becoming extremely urgent in certain parts of the country. Underground sources are already being developed for private purposes, and, if they are exploited too far they will have the effect of draining away the underground supplies from other localities which could conveniently be supplied from the underground source. I understand that in the United States the problem of the utilisation of underground sources of supply has been an urgent one for many years. In some of the States in America they have had considerable experience in working legislation for controlling this matter. I suggest to my right hon. and learned Friend that one of the things he might consider would be to send a small mission out to the United States of America to examine on the spot the working of their legislation governing this particular subject.
I come now to another aspect of the matter to which no less importance ought to be attached. The responsibility for the water supply of this country is at present divided between the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Agriculture. Experience shows that joint responsibility usually results in delay, and in this particular case water supply has been no exception to the rule. I say frankly to my right hon. Friend that I do not believe that he is the right person to undertake this matter. The allocation of water resources is really a planning question and I suggest to him that the Minister of Town and Country Planning should plan the water supplies of a particular neighbourhood when he approves plans for the development of various districts. Just as after the last war, the powers which my right hon. Friend's Department now exercise in relation to water supplies were transferred to him from the Board of Trade, so, I believe, the time has come when these powers should be transferred by his Department to the Minister of Town and Country Planning. The Minister of Town and Country Planning ought to assume full responsibility for undertaking this survey which I have advocated and for allocating water resources to those districts to which they can most conveniently afford a supply. It is an essential and logical part of the process of planning the needs of a locality. I am sure that it ought to be undertaken


by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Town and Country Planning. Some time we must make a reality of this new Ministry of Town and Country Planning. It is hardly a reality to-day.
We know that the Minister has been hard at work for many months but what the results of his labours are likely to be are not at present known. I suggest to the House that the responsibility of the Ministry of Town and Country Planning could and ought, and could be, usefully extended by including within their jurisdiction this question of the proper allocation of water sources and the appropriation of water supplies. If we make it the responsibility of one Department, instead of the responsibility of two Departments as it is to-day, we are more likely to ensure that this comprehensive national plan which we all desire will be brought into effective and efficient operation.

Miss Lloyd George: I would like in the first place to give the hon. and learned Member for Ilford (Mr. Hutchinson) an assurance that he need not really concern himself about swimming pools in Anglesey; it is surrounded by a particularly fine swimming pool. I would also like to congratulate him in the second place upon a very remarkable achievement. He has divided the seasons in this country into two—dry and wet—a thing which no one else has ever been able to do. Hon. Members who are opposing this Bill have made out a convincing case for the need for a comprehensive system of water supplies in this country. I think very largely they were speaking to the converted. Anyone who knows the conditions in rural Britain cannot fail to recognise the imperative necessity for having a national scheme of water supplies in this country backed by national finance. I think there would be general agreement on all sides of the House with the picture that the two hon. Members have painted, of the conditions in the rural areas. We have only got to regard one fact. In 1929 it was estimated that at least 1,000,000 of the rural population were without piped water and that 3,000 out of 11,000 larger villages in England and Wales were without pipe water supplies. It seems to me that an adequate water supply is an indispensable condition of a prosperous agriculture. It is essential, if the rural population is

to enjoy the amenities, and the housing standards that their fellow citizens in the towns are, we hope, going to enjoy. It is the only condition under which young people will remain in the agricultural industry and in the countryside.
The Government, some considerable time ago, set up a Committee, to which reference has already been made, presided over by Lord Justice Scott. That Committee recommended that the Ministries of Health and Agriculture, in conjunction with the agricultural industry, should review the whole position of water supplies in this country, with special reference to the provision of a main supply to all towns and larger villages not at present supplied. That was their main recommendation on this point. That Report was presented to this House nearly 18 months ago. We are getting used, though not reconciled, to this time-lag between the publication of Reports and decisions upon them. No one would wish to attach any blame to the Minister, he has but newly come to the Ministry. The other day he told us that this Report, in so far as it affects water, is to be taken down from the shelf where it has lain with its companions, the Barlow, the Uthwatt and the Beveridge Reports. I understand they are occasionally taken down for a dusting and airing, sometimes for intensive study, but never for decisions.
The Minister said the other day that the Government propose, as part of their general reconstruction programme, to introduce legislation on this matter. He said that they are going to ask for powers to enable the Exchequer to give further grants to extend pipe water supplies in rural areas. I would like to say one thing on that. Before the war a grant of £1,000,000 was given to assist in the provision of water supplies in rural areas. Unless the Government is thinking on entirely different lines from that, it is going to be completely useless. Only one of the Bills which is under discussion now, the Anglesey Bill, is going to cost very nearly half a million. That is for one area in the country. What on earth is the use of granting £1,000,000 to cover the needs of the whole country? The Government must consider this question on another scale than that.
The Minister has gone as far as to say that he hopes to introduce legislation on this matter during the current Session.


I hope he is going to do so, but some of us are a little sceptical, as I have said, about this time-lag. I would therefore stress that the Bills which are before the House deal with very urgent cases; the lack of adequate water supplies are matters of very great concern to the public health administration and to local government in these two areas.
It may seem strange in this Debate but, if I may, I would like to say one word about my constituency. There really is a very strong case there for special measures in this matter. There has been very great poverty in the island. All attempts to develop its resources, to give additional employment to its people, to house its people decently, to give them tolerable living conditions, have been impeded by the lack of adequate water supplies. The conditions in this respect are really lamentable, as anyone who has visited the island will realise. With the exception of five villages, none of the villages has a pipe supply, and in the rural districts the inhabitants have to rely upon public wells or rain water tanks, and many of them have to carry their water from large distances in all kinds of weather. Taking the highest figure, it would not be safe to say that more than one-third of the population are adequately supplied in that area, and the shortage in some districts is very acute. Indeed, there is not sufficient water to meat the present requirements of the county, and there was a moment when the Minister of Health had to be warned that it would be unwise for further population to be brought to the island, or a very serious situation for the health authorities might arise.
It also has a very important bearing on the future of the area. As I have said, the island was practically a distressed area before the war. Unemployment was extraordinarily heavy for a rural area, and the whole future of the island will depend upon this, whether it is intended to develop its resources as a seaside resort or maintain its industries or attract fresh industries. Above all, the future wellbeing of agriculture will depend upon it. I do not wish to detain the House any further, because I think the position is already plain. I think I have said enough to show that this matter is not one that can be shelved for a single hour or a day. It has been supported by all the local authorities in the island and by the

population of Anglesey as a whole. I do not think the Members who have opposed this Bill—for reasons we well understand—need fear that any scheme put forward in this Measure will cut across any part of a national scheme which may hereafter be brought before the House. I would remind them that Anglesey is a self-contained unit and in providing its own water supply is not, therefore, likely to affect any scheme which might be decided upon for the adjacent island of England and Wales.

Mr. Benson: This Debate, as we all know, is not really concerned with the two Bills which have been put down by the Chairman of Ways and Means. Those Bills have been blocked primarily for the purpose of raising a discussion as to the national organisation of our water supplies. Certainly, neither the hon. Lady the Member for Anglesey (Miss Lloyd George), nor myself, wish that purpose anything but well. Indeed, I doubt very much whether it would be pocsible to find two Members in this House to tell against a Motion in favour of the national organisation of our water supplies. Frequently, important requirements of this kind are hung up because of powerful vested interests, butt question very much whether there are any powerful interests holding up the national organisation of a water supply. There is no reason whatever why this matter should not have been dealt with 10, 20 or even 30 years ago, save for the inertia on the part of Government Departments. [An HON. MEMBER: "Divided responsibility."] That may have been one of the stumbling blocks, but if it were not for this inertia divided responsibility could not hold up this matter for six months. What rather interests me are the arguments used by the Mover and Seconder of the rejection. The hon. Member for Elland (Mr. Levy) complained that the water supply was patchwork, haphazard, piecemeal and overlapping. The hon. and learned Member for Ilford (Mr. Hutchinson) demanded that it should be organised on a national basis and also referred to exploitation for private profit.

Mr. Hutchinson: No, the expression I used was, "exploitation of the water resources." That expression is quite well known to everybody. I did not mean it in any offensive sense.

Mr. Benson: It depends upon the point of view. Exploitation for private profit may or may not be offensive. The attitude taken up by the Mover and Seconder, was that the national interest must prevail over private concessions. Does the hon. Member opposite deny that?

Mr. Levy: It does not apply in this case, because most of the water supply in this country is already in the hands of local authorities.

Mr. Benson: But the local authorities are not national. The case the hon. Member put forward is that the national interest must have preference over sectional interests—

Mr. Levy: The case I put forward is that only a national plan can provide an adequate water supply and that no local authority, or combination of local authorities, can give an efficient supply.

Mr. Benson: I am quite prepared to accept that version. The main point the hon. Member is trying to establish is that if you want an efficient water supply it must be organised on a national basis.

Mr. Levy: And it must be linked up with main drainage.

Mr. Benson: You will not find anybody in my party disagreeing with the contention that organsiation should be on a national basis. Indeed, we are astonished that hon. Members opposite have just wakened up to this fact. We have been saying it for the last century. I am still a little puzzled as to why we should limit it to water. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If a sectional attempt to organise national resources is bad in the case of water then it is bad in every other similar instance. It applies most certainly to the land if it applies to water—

Mr. Speaker: I think we had better stick to water.

Mr. Benson: Yes, Sir, we have been getting rather wide. The complaints made by the hon. Members opposite were that this sectionalisation of water supply led to excuses on the part of some authorities, to shortage and want on the part of individuals and to waste of resources and that unless there was adequate machinery to utilise national resources we should get into trouble. With that we agree in every

respect. Were it not out of Order I should say that we should apply it to other things than water.
The question of money has been mentioned. It has already been said that if the Ministry of Health think that they are adequately performing their duties by making an inadequate grant of money they will not satisfy the House. But it is not so much a question of whether it is a large or small sum of money which is granted; it is the use to which the money is put. I do not know how many pounds have been spent in the past on the provision of water supplies but I do know that the spending of money on sectional schemes, where the problem has not been visualised as a whole, has been wasteful and extravagant. You have Birmingham and Liverpool fetching water from Wales and Manchester dipping into the Lakes. You have a great muddle of water conduits up and down the country and organisations dependent entirely upon which water authority gets in first. That method of organising your water supply is bound to be extravagant. I would sooner the Minister of Health provided a plan and no money rather than money and no plan. Planning is far more irnportant than Government assistance—not that he can hope to get away without providing both, but first of all planning and then money.
I suppose I ought to mention my constituency's Bill. I can say very little more about the Chesterfield Water Bill than the hon. Lady said about her Bill. Here we have a comparatively small water scheme which has been forced on the local authority in war time by immediate urgency. The shortage in Chesterfield is not quite, but almost entirely, due to the fact that our water consumption has increased enormously owing to munitions production and it is impossible that this increased supply, in view of the purposes for which we require it, should be denied by the House while there is a war on. Certainly, I do not see that either Anglesey or Chesterfield can be expected to wait for an increased water supply until the time when the Ministry of Health wakes up. It has been sleeping for a long time and we have no guarantee that it is going to wake up at 8 o'clock in the morning, and we must have our water supply immediately. Actually the proposal that we put forward is a perfectly simple one. There is a river flowing


through Chesterfield. It is a little stream which starts inside our area. We propose to tap it on one side of Chesterfield and to turn the effluent into the same stream on the other side. We are not taking water from anyone nor reducing to any great extent the flow of the river outside our own borders. We are not cutting into the supplies of any other water board or catchment area. Though not quite so isolated as the Anglesey scheme, from the point of view of national planning it is comparatively innocuous. Owing to the smallness and harmlessness of the proposal we are putting forward I think the House is not likely to deny us a Second Reading.
Turning to the main question, hon. Members opposite have had a majority in the House for many years. If the Ministry of Health has been sluggish, as it certainly has, and somnolent, theirs is the responsibility. We welcome this sudden enlightenment. I am not quite sure whether it is a conversion yet but we shall hope for a wider conversion when we see further signs of it. They bear the responsibility for the sluggishness of their administration and they ought not to take it out of Anglesey and Chesterfield when they have suddenly seen the light.

Major York: I support the Amendment, though I should like to say to the hon. Members for Anglesey (Miss Lloyd George) and Chesterfield (Mr. Benson) that I, and I am sure my hon. Friends, bear their constituencies no grudge. Particularly in the case of Anglesey I should like to help the hon. Lady to give a water supply to the villages in her area. I felt that it was somewhat unnecessary to make a misguided attempt to introduce party politics into an atmosphere of unanimity. I cannot allow it to be said that my hon. Friends and I put any sectional interest before that of the country. In fact, it is the main theme of the group to which I belong that the national interest shall be pre-eminent. There has been, in the rural areas in particular, a complete lack of interest throughout all the years between the wars on subjects such as producing water supplies to villages, and the farms from which our milk supplies come, and making the amenities of rural areas rather more equivalent to those of urban areas. There is a great deal of overlapping in Government

Departments. In the district in which I live the Ministry of Supply, an entirely different Department, suddenly steps in and sinks deep bore holes all over the place. They are all below the level of the existing bore holes and wells and when I, without geological experience, try to explain to the Ministry what they have done I am told I am talking nonsense and that their bore holes have nothing to do with anything they have done. If there was some national plan by which all water supplies were covered, that sort of thing would not happen. It is, therefore, a pointer to the importance of a national plan with one single authority for the whole country to undertake the business.
I have mentioned rural dwellings, and my hon. Friend the Member for Elland (Mr. Levy) gave illustrations of the way in which certain areas of the country were inundated with water on the surface, which was flowing about with great profusion, but were unable to find a supply to drink from. I live in such an area and, although I have, with the help of the Ministry of Agriculture, been able to alleviate in the very near future that predicament, there again is another Government Department stepping in and dealing with this single commodity of water. Throughout the country there is a most urgent need for some system whereby a pipe line is carried to every small town, village and hamlet. In my own area every summer we are practically without an adequate supply of water. Our own bore holes have been overloaded owing to the increase in population and the water which is probably being drained from other sources by deeper wells, and probably the rain water which is falling upon the catchment area is going into another strata. I do not know the exact reason, but the fact remains that we are short of water. If there were a national plan and one authority dealing with all the supplies, we should have an emergency pipe line coming from the reservoirs which supply other authorities. I do not know what has held up this reorganisation of water in the past. I cannot help feeling that it is something more than inertia on the part of the Ministry of Health. I feel that there may perhaps be some local authority vanity, or the reason may be financial. Whatever it is, if we had a real scheme to deal with the problem finance would count as one item before this House and it could


be discussed upon its merits. Therefore, I support the Amendment and I hope that the Minister of Health and the Government will not leave the question where we leave it to-day, but that when we have, as no doubt we shall, given a Second Reading to these Bills, we shall start on the real work of making a national water supply.

Mr. R. C. Morrison: The House owes an apology to the promoters of the Anglesey and Chesterfield Bills for having used an old Parliamentary device in order to discuss something which has very little to do with the Bills. I am certain that the House will be unanimous in giving the Bills a Second Reading and that the Amendment is only put down for the purpose of having a discussion which some Members have been anxious to get for a long time. They asked the Government to introduce the Water Undertakings Bill, and some of us wanted then to express our views on the matter, but the Government decided not to go on with it. I hope that the position taken up by the last Minister of Health will not be followed by the present Minister. The last Minister's way of dealing with water was the Water Undertakings Bill. It was first to get that Bill through and then to consider the general question of the water supplies of the country. I wanted to say, but I did not get the opportunity, that the reason why so much opposition was stirred up against that Bill was that it was putting the cart before the horse, that it would enable a whole multitude of water undertakings to dig themselves in without any national plan, and that, therefore, the national plan ought to come first.
Another reason for using the opportunity of two Private Bills to give Members an opportunity to raise this matter is because of their desire to draw attention to the general lack of action on the part of the Government in regard to water supplies. I also welcome the keen desire that has suddenly developed on the opposite benches for the nationalisation of the water supplies. There are 1,100 water undertakings in this country, of which 230 are private companies selling water for private profit. While we all hold our own opinions about Socialism, Conservatism, private enterprise and the rest, I believe that there would be an overwhelming majority in the House for the view that water is one of the things that should not

be sold for private profit. I hope, therefore, that the speech of the hon. Member for Elland (Mr. Levy) means that he accepts that principle and agrees that this House should say to private enterprise, "Hands off; no exploitation from the sale of water."
The hon. and learned Member for Ilford (Mr. Hntehinson) made a reference which, in view of the wide latitude of this Debate, I may be allowed to amplify, because it is something that calls out to be said very urgently to the Minister of Health. The reference was to underground water. Under the law there is nothing to prevent any individual sinking a well anywhere, drawing as much water as he likes, and doing what he likes with the water, irrespective of its quality. If, however, a big water undertaking like the Metropolitan Water Board wants to sink a well, it must promote a Bill in this House. The result of that policy, which I commend to the Minister's attention because it is an urgent question, is twat many new factories in London, in Greater London, and in other parts of the country for all I know, such as laundries, breweries, hotels and factories which use a great deal of water, sink a well as one of the first things they do. They are then at liberty to draw what water they like, and they draw it from the common supplies.
To such an extent is this going on that in a recent report which the Minister has in his Department it is stated that over a single area of London the water level below the chalk has been falling from one to three feet per year for the last 20 years, and that it is now from 60 to 80 feet lower than it was 20 years ago. Nobody is doing anything about it, and it is getting worse. Everybody who is interested knows that last year we had the lowest rainfall in this area for over 10 years. The effects of that will be seen in a few months' time, and I beg the Minister of Health to pay attention to it as one of the urgent things to be dealt with. I know it is easy for Members to make speeches and say we want a national water scheme, but somebody has to make a beginning somewhere, and I ask the Minister to give his urgent attention to the drain upon the underground water supplies and to consider whether it is not possible to take steps to stop anybody else boring wells. If he is not able to come


forward with legislation, I hope he will prevent people after boring a well and drawing water out of it then leaving it derelict with the slime oozing down to the underground water supplies on which undertakers are dependent for their own supplies.
All this has nothing to do with the Anglesley and Chesterfield Bills, and I can only apologise to the Members concerned and their local authorities that the House has taken the opportunity of bringing to the notice of the Minister of Health the urgent necessity of somebody doing something about the water problem. My friends tell me that it is most difficult to get anyone at the Ministry of Health really to get his teeth into this question. If they do find somebody there, the question of water is only an incidental part of their work and they have a lot of other bigger things to do. The hon. Member for Elland, who delivered the most eloquent speech on water that I have ever heard and left me speechless, has left the House, but I presume that he has no intention of doing anything to oppose the passage of these Bills.

Mr. Clement Davies: We ought to be grateful to the hon. Member for Elland (Mr. Levy) for raising this matter, and I am sure that the two hon. Members who are concerned with the Bills which are before the House are really most grateful. It was the only way in which they could bring to the attention of the House the position in which their two districts are placed. If the Amendment had not been put down, the Bills would have passed through in the ordinary way. Anglesey would have had to deal with its own position, without having put before the House what its real condition is. I want to congratulate Anglesey upon its courage in bringing forward the Bill. That courage is the measure of its necessity, and it is the measure also of the complete failure of the Ministry of Health to deal with a situation about which they have known year after year, from the reports that have gone into them from the medical officer of health, to have been appalling; but they have done nothing, except to sit still and let little Anglesey do the best it could.
Let the House pause and see whether it is fair to ask Anglesey to undertake such an enormous burden as this. The

cost of this matter alone is going to be £473,000. That is merely for water, for which they will get some assistance from the Government. The mere bringing in of water and leaving sewerage untouched is adding to their difficulties. They will have to provide their own sewerage system and get no grant from the Ministry of Health to meet the cost of it. The grant is for water alone. Certainly in the last 50 years Anglesey has suffered from bad housing, which also affects the health of the people of Anglesey. It has got to tackle that position, which is really serious. What that cost will amount to I do not know. A Committee of the House of Commons is dealing with the Education Bill. The cost for Anglesey will be the same for that, I imagine, as for Montgomeryshire. The cost to our ratepayers of putting the schools right in Montgomeryshire will be £500,000. It will also cost £500,000 for Anglesey. That is £1,000,000, thrust upon us, because of the nation's failure to undertake its duty towards such places as Anglesey.
Again, let the House just pause and see what has happened. A 1d. rate produces just £610 a year in Anglesey. The Ministry of Health have known of that position throughout, and have done absolutely nothing. It is no good blaming one particular political section. Those facts and figures have been known to a whole succession of Ministers. I must say that nothing was done when hon. Members, now above the Gangway on this side of the House, were sitting behind their own Government, between 1929 and 1931.

Mr. Gallacher: The Tories were in full strength at that time.

Mr. Davies: We Liberals were doing our best to drive them on at that time.

Mr. Rhys Davies: Would the hon. and learned Member enlighten the House as to what the Liberals did for the water supply of the country?

Mr. Speaker: We are discussing water, and I must therefore pour some cold water on the flames of this discussion, as it is getting rather heated.

Mr. C. Davies: I have dealt with Anglesey. Perhaps I may take the other case, dealt with by the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Mr. Benson), when he spoke


in favour of his Bill. Again, it shows what they have to do in order to meet a situation which is really a national situation. Their difficulties have been increased because of people coming into the munition factories there. The cost to them is going to be 465,000. I asked the hon. Gentleman what his 1d. rate was, and he told me it was £1,600, nearly three times that of Anglesey. It is right that the attention of the House should be directed to these matters. We are all apparently agreed now that there should be a national scheme of water supply. It is just silly to ask local authorities all the time to provide for their own local requirements, as if the germs knew where the boundary of one local authority ended and another began, and as if health were a purely local matter and had nothing to do with the nation as a whole. The situation is just ridiculous.
Take our situation. Our local districts are badly supplied with water, yet we are supplying Liverpool and Birmingham with water, and we are not allowed to touch a pint of it all the way from Rhaiadr to Birmingham or to Liverpool, and it is at the public expense, because local authorities have to come here, to Parliament, to get their Acts to purchase the land and the easements, as is proposed in these two Bills. I dare say that, when that has been done, any money which the local authorities require over and above what they acquire parsimoniously from the Government, they have to raise by loan from London or from the nation as a whole; and still we persist in these patchwork schemes. One is glad of the opportunity of pointing these things out to the Minister of Health and of reminding him that the Department, which was created when the right hon. Member for Carnarvon Boroughs (Mr. Lloyd George) was Prime Minister, ought to live up to the name which was given to it in 1919. It should not regard itself all the time as merely the old Local Government Board, exercising a not-too-careful supervision over local authorities and not concerned with health. It is about time that it lived up to its name.

Mr. Butcher: We all owe a very great debt of gratitude to the two local authorities who have thought right to proceed in this way. At the present time we are faced with a -dilemma from which we cannot escape.

Either we must have a national plan for water supply, or water undertakings up and down the country must promote Bills of this nature to put right the position within their areas. We ask the Minister of Health to let us have a clear and definite understanding when he replies as to what is to be the future of water supplies in this country. I was glad to hear the hon. and learned Member for Ilford (Mr. Hutchinson) and the hon. Member far North Tottenham (Mr. R. C. Morrison) refer to the question of underground water. I rather imagine that they were speaking with a London outlook, but London is not the only part of the country in which the problem of underground water supplies is grave and difficult. I am thinking of the South of England, where several local undertakings feel the gravest possible concern as to their future water supplies. Even now, at the wet time of the year, water is being taken in carts to supply cattle and children in the farms, yet within 10, 15 or 20 miles from the area millions of gallons per day are gushing out of the earth, are being used far the production of watercress, and are passing into the drains. This in itself is presenting the drainage boards with inescapable problems in dealing with such enormous quantities of water.
I know that since he has been at the Ministry of Health the Minister has concerned himself with these matters, and that nobody could have been more kind or courteous, or more interested in these problems than he has shown himself to be while he has been there. I am extraordinarily grateful to him for all he has done. I say to him that we are sorry he has come to the Ministry at a time when this matter is so urgent but it really brooks no delay. Either we must have this national scheme to put into effect so that the local authorities, the undertakings, the persons responsible for supplying water now, can see on what lines they must proceed, or alternatively these undertakings must take upon themselves the responsibility of promoting Bills similar to this which will come up and occupy Parliamentary time, and when the whole thing has been done we shall have nothing but a patchwork quilt.

The Minister of Health (Mr. Willink): I am in the rather curious position to-day of having to rise and give advice to the House which I do not believe it needs in


the least and which it hardly requires to hear from me. My position here, of course, is not that of one speaking on behalf of a Government proposal. It is limited at most, as I understand it, to advising the House on whether it should take a usual or an unusual course. This Debate is, so I am told, of a slightly unusual kind. An amending Motion in respect of a water Bill of this nature has not been moved for many years, but I do not in any way deprecate what has occurred. What has been said to-day will be most useful to me and I shall study it in full detail.
I should like to assure my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Montgomery (Mr. Davies) that whatever may have been the case in the past—and this is no occasion for delving into the past—neither I nor my Department are idle with regard to this matter at the moment. It may indeed interest the House to know that on the very first day I was at the Ministry of Health I began to apply my mind to this question of water supply. I should also like to assure him, because he does not seem to have in his mind a recollection of what I said in answer to a Question a few weeks ago, that the first Bill I propose to introduce with regard to rural water supply, the most urgent matter of all, will deal with sewerage as well as water supply. I think I should say at once that I would advise the House to let these Bills—or perhaps I should, to be in Order, say this Bill—take its usual course.
May I remind the House of what will be the programme? I have promised not only to introduce this rural water Bill, covering sewerage in addition to water, but to lay a White Paper. Again, if I may make one observation with regard to my hon. and learned Friend's remarks, it is that it is perhaps a little unkind to the present Minister of Health to say that the last few weeks have indicated that the Ministry is taking no interest in health. There has been a measure of tangible evidence that the Ministry is taking a considerable interest in health. It is also taking a considerable interest in water. There is no doubt, as has been stressed, and it has not been controverted, that there is a real urgency about the proposals dealt with in these two Bills, no doubt whatever. I would not

distinguish between them. All that was said by the hon. Member for Anglesey (Miss Lloyd George) is confirmed by the advice I have. In the ordinary course, if this Motion is rejected, the Bills will go upstairs; but they will not be considered until the Government's general proposals are available. Therefore, the Committee will be able to consider these isolated, proposals in the light of the general proposals which I have promised shall be on a national basis. My Department, of course, will have the opportunity of first carefully examining the Bills and then of making its report to the Committee. That report will be made with reference to the main proposals, which, I repeat, will be on a national basis.
I know that the House will not expect me, either by reason of my personal position or in view of the promise that I have made, to discuss the various specific points that have been raised to-day. They will be for me to take into account in the drafting of the White Paper, and in the discussion on the White Paper. But the way I view this whole matter may, perhaps, be put in this way. I am not content, nor are the Government as a whole content, with the existing arrangements for water supply, either the local arrangements or the general arrangements. There is no doubt that, in spite of what was said by one hon. Member, our scientific knowledge of river flow and of underground water is as yet insufficient. Particularly with regard to river flow, this is not a matter which can be dealt with in a short time. It is a long-term assessment which is necessary and it is of very great importance in connection with that complicated question of compensation water. The most urgent short-term need is undoubtedly the further extension of piped supplies in rural areas, and the Government's proposals will be on a scale which will, I hope, be considered generous. But there are all these other things to which we are giving our attention—better planning, scientific measurement of resources, better rural supplies, water for industry, a more vigorous central initiative, amalgamation of undertakings, equalisation of charges over wider areas—all these matters are in our minds and in making our proposals what has been said to-day will be given close attention and be carefully observed.

Mr. R. C. Morrison: Would the right hon. and learned Gentleman be good enough to say whether the matters also include the reduction in the number of authorities in the country?

Mr. Willink: Yes, and indeed that is a matter on which prima facie the Anglesey Bill is in accordance with our general ideas. In Anglesey the local authorities have got together, as I understand it. They cover the majority of the undertakings and the minor authorities are agreed with the projects as a whole. Certainly that is one of the matters on which we are in complete agreement.
This is no time to go back into the past but let it not go out that our water supplies in this country are such a disgrace as might be thought by some. Ninety-five per cent. of the people of this land have a piped supply. Our typhoid deaths are, I believe, the lowest in the world. Let us not, in our anxiety not to be complacent, fail to realise that there have been great accomplishments in this sphere of water. Yet we have much more to do. We intend to put our proposals before the House, I hope—though I must not be taken to be making a promise—before Easter, or at any rate very shortly afterwards, in conjunction with the Bill dealing with rural water.

Mr. Benson: The right hon. and learned Gentleman says his proposals are coming possibly before Easter, and that the Bills will not be considered until the proposals are before the House. Does that mean he proposes to hold up further consideration of these Bills until afterwards? Will he guarantee if he does that, that the Bills will be considered this Session?

Mr. Willink: I am assured that in the normal course these Bills, if they are given a Second Reading, will reach the Committee upstairs in the month of May. There is no question of delaying them. In the ordinary course, the House would have an opportunity of considering the subject when the White Paper comes before it, and another opportunity on the Third Reading of these two Bills.

Mr. Levy: Will my right hon. and learned Friend have some regard to the potential dangers, which I pointed out, with regard to swimming baths, and will he take medical opinion of the highest character, to see whether it supports the charges I have made, because I am sure

that something ought to be done if my right hon. Friend is going to congratulate himself on all the health services he is going to give?

Mr. Willink: This seems to be, of all the matters which have been raised, the most remote from Anglesey; but of course I will note what my hon. Friend has said, and I will see that it is given consideration. I suggest that there is really no advantage of any kind to be gained by rejecting these Bills, and I hope that these Amendments will be withdrawn, and the Bills given their Second Reading.

Mr. Rhys Davies: There is one problem which I think has been forgotten in this Debate. The hon. and learned Member for Montgomery Mr. C. Davies) made the point that Welsh local authorities on the pipeline from Liverpool to Birmingham were not allowed to tap that supply. I want the Minister to have regard to quite another type of case. Where the main pipeline of a large authority runs through agricultural districts or through small townships, the small local authorities cannot on occasions come to an arrangement with the large supplier, and some of these smaller authorities, consequently, are at the moment talking of establishing a local supply for themselves. It seems to me that, because of difficulties prevailing between very large water undertakings and small authorities, it is a waste of public money for anything like that to be done. I speak with some little knowledge on the point. Then, I am sure it will interest the House to hear that those of us who are connected with friendly and kindred society work can very nearly tell from sickness statistics the conditions of the water supply in a district covering the membership of the society. When, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman talks of a vast scheme of health services, better hospitals, and larger sanitaria, I would assure him that, whatever contribution he may make to the health services of the community, in that direction, there is nothing he can do better than to provide a clean water supply for all the people of this country. Might I add another to the many bouquets which have been thrown to the hon. Member for Elland (Mr. Levy)? He has persisted in this vital matter ever since he came to this House. He has metaphorically drunk water, talked water, and he has almost walked


on water all the time. I hope he has advocated so much that, in the end, the main object which he has in view will be achieved. I would not like, however, the promise made by the Minister, concerning the larger proposals that the Government intend to make, to preclude these two Bills which are before the House to-day, being passed. I am glad that the Minister has had ample cause at last to know that we want him to wake up in this vital matter.

Mr. Levy: In view of the statement of my right hon. and learned Friend, in which I understood him to give a promise to bring in a national water scheme, and not side-step the issue by setting up more redundant Committees—and may I say, with great respect, that we never had any intention of refusing water supplies under these two Bills—

Mr. Speaker: A second speech is not allowed.

Mr. Levy: Then may I say that I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Amendment?

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Main Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time, and committed.

Orders of the Day — CHESTERFIELD AND BOLSOVER WATER BILL [by Order]

Read a Second time, and committed.

Orders of the Day — EDUCATION BILL

Again considered in Committee.

[Major MILNER in the Chair]

CLAUSE 14.—(Classification of auxiliary schools as controlled schools, aided schools, or special agreement schools.)

Postponed Proceeding on Amendment: In page 11, line 45, after the first "school," to insert:
and provided that there is not a county school available within reasonable distance the order shall direct that the school shall be a controlled school."—[Mr. C. Davies.]

Question again proposed, "That those words be there inserted."

Mr. Ivor Thomas: When we turned to other Business, I was on the point of explaining that my hon. and learned

Friend's Amendment, while it would remove injustices from which the Nonconformists have suffered in the past, would impose on Church people an injustice similar to that which has been suffered by Nonconformists in the past. In fact, what we would discover is what Milton discovered a long time ago:
New presbyter is but old priest writ large.
One hon. Member objected that the Church of England has accepted the general principles of this Bill, and must, therefore, be satisfied with the controlled school. Although I cannot speak officially for the Church of England, I think I ought to say that, as is well known, the Church of England accepted the compromise in this Bill only in the same sense that it has been accepted by Nonconformists. This Amendment is an attempt to go beyond, or get behind, that compromise, in the interests, or supposed interests, of Free Churchmen. If the spokesmen for the Free Churches take that line, clearly it will be open to the spokesmen of the Church of England also to break away from the agreed compromise represented by this Bill. I ought to add, too, that a distinction must be made between the Church of England and the official Church of England—a distinction which does not exist in the case of Nonconformists. This promise has been accepted by the official Church of England, but there is a great deal of restiveness among the rank and file of that Church over it; and, indeed, it has been put across the Church of England by methods which leave nothing to be learnt from the usual channels in this House.

Mr. Messer: Can we have any evidence of that?

Mr. Thomas: I will give several pieces of evidence. Last week there was to have been a debate on this subject in the Church Assembly. There was a great danger that the principle of this Bill would be rejected and an altogether different principle approved. That debate was stifled. Another piece of evidence is that the Church newspaper with the largest circulation is strongly opposed to the principle of this Bill, and wants another solution, in which the dual system would be abolished and the right of parents to have their children educated according to their own desires would be carried out.


These are two pieces of evidence, and I could easily add to them. The rank and file of the Church of England are not satisfied with the controlled school. I may say that a good deal of the evidence which reaches me on this subject comes from Wales and not from England. I get many representations from Wales—

Mr. C. Davies: Are they from Welshmen or from Englishmen who have gone there?

Mr. Thomas: No, all the representations I have received from Wales are from Welshmen with Welsh names.

Mr. Davies: Do they write in English or in Welsh?

Mr. Thomas: They write to me in English.

Mr. Evelyn Walkden: They talk in Welsh, but write in English.

Mr. Thomas: It ought to be made perfectly clear that the controlled school is not something that is liked by the Church of England, and, even where it is accepted, it will be accepted without enthusiasm. What is wanted by the Church of England are schools in which our own children can be brought up in the faith of the Church of England. I trust I have made that clear. Let me now go on to remind the Committee of the words used by the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. Davies). He said that the teaching in Church schools in single-school areas was not fully acceptable to the parents of the children who are compelled to attend. If this Amendment is carried, that will be exactly the position of Church people in these areas. They will still be single-school areas in which, instead of the schools being objectionable to Nonconformists, they will now be objectionable to Church people. It is just an inversion of the position. If there is any evil in segregation, it is one that, in future, will be felt by Anglican children instead of Nonconformist children. My hon. Friends may argue that that is only fair, and that, after such a long period in which Nonconformists have suffered from this disability, it is right that Church children should suffer; but I believe the hon. Member for Montgomery is an equitably-minded man and would not wish to use that argument. I am quite certain that he does not want to create another injustice

in the removal of an old one. I believe that there are ways of meeting that. I may not discuss them now, because this is a narrow Amendment before us, but he must take it from me that Church people will feel a grievance if this Amendment is carried. He may think it unreasonable, just as I find it rather unreasonable that Nonconformist parents object to their children learning the sublime teaching and lofty morality of the Church catechism. I find it unreasonable, but I accept the fact. The hon. and learned Member must also accept it from me that a very large number of Church parents find agreed syllabus religion objectionable.

Mr. Cove: Why did the Church agree to it, then?

Mr. Thomas: If the hon. Member had been listening to my argument for the past five minutes, he would have known. I cannot repeat myself.

Mr. Cove: The hon. Member is talking rubbish.

Mr. Lindsay: Can the hon. Member tell us on what he bases his statement "large numbers of people"?

Mr. Thomas: I have given some evidence already. There was the debate in the Church Assembly last week and there is the attitude taken by the "Church Times," which are two pieces of evidence. Hon. Members may dislike them, but they cannot deny the facts. At a later stage of the Bill I hope to explain precisely why it is that we do not like the agreed syllabus, but at the moment I must leave it. Under this Bill, it is quite certain that a large number of Church schools will become controlled schools in any case. I should be as hesitant as the President to give any prophecy about the number, but we all realise that quite a considerable number will become controlled schools. It will be without any enthusiasm on the part of the Church, for sheer lack of funds, but it will go a long way to meet the objections of my hon. and learned Friend. Ought we to go further and insist that every Church school in a single-school area becomes a controlled school, which is what the Amendment seeks? That, I suggest, would be an Amendment that would undermine the compromise on which this Bill is based.

Mr. Cove: What compromise?

Mr. Thomas: I am repeating well-known facts. It was not a compromise to which I was any party, but it is well known to hon. Members, and I would suggest that, if this problem is left to the healing balm of time, we shall be able to deal with it much more happily than if this Amendment should be carried. The younger Nonconformists are very different indeed in their outlook from the men who fought the battles of 1902, and indeed, if I have any criticism to make of the way in which the President has handled his negotiations on this matter, on which he has been so justly congratulated, it is that he rather tended to deal with the older generation of Nonconformists and not with the younger generation, who are so much closer in their relationships with the Church. For these several reasons, I hope this Amendment may be withdrawn.

Mr. Jewson: The hon. Member for Keighley (Mr. I. Thomas) has rather deprecated the bringing forward of this Amendment, but, although I agree with him that the Bill, as it stands, has been accepted by us who are Nonconformists, and those who are members of other communions, I take it that we are not precluded from trying to improve it and from making any suggestions that we think will do that. It is, of course, evident that, so long as the dual system exists at all, there will be certain anomalies and what we consider certain injustices, from which we cannot escape, but the chief difficulty with which we have to deal is that of the single-school area. Over these anomalies I am personally the less perturbed, because I want to see in our educational system as large a variety of schools as is possible. So long as there is a choice of schools for parents it is a very good thing and no real injustice can arise. When we come to the single-school area, the case is, of course, different. The hon. Member for Keighley has put his case, and thinks that if we were to make the change suggested in this Amendment we should only create a new injustice instead of an old one, but surely, if you are to have only one school in one area, the way to have the Least injustice is to provide a council school, which is what those of us who are Nonconformists would desire. I think we should be satisfied, at any rate under this Bill, if the Amendment which has been proposed

could be accepted. We should feel that our views had been met to a very great extent.
I ought to say that the hon. Member for Keighley is mistaken if he thinks that the younger generation of Nonconformists take any less strong views on their principles than the older. That is most certainly not my experience. It is rather contrary to that. I myself, of course, well remember the unfortunate time of passive resistance, in which I had, as a a very young man, some share myself. My views since then have changed to the extent that I would much rather see religion taught in the schools, even if it is not taught on the particular lines which I myself favour. When I mention that I am a Baptist, hon. Members will understand that the agreed syllabus does not teach the particular tenets which. I myself hold. I think it would be found that the younger men of my denomination were considerably stiffer to deal with than those who have had the experience I have mentioned. I hardly expect that the Minister will be able to accept the Amendment, but it would certainly go a very long way towards removing the difficulties which we feel about these 4,000 single-school areas. What I would like best of all would be an arrangement that there should not be any single-school areas and at least two schools in every area, but that cannot be done, and I suggest that the Amendment makes a very fair compromise in dealing with the situation.

Mr. Gallacher: I support the Amendment very strongly. When I was listening to the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) I was struck by one thing. He said that 42 years ago there was terrific heat when this question was discussed and now we discussed it in a calm atmosphere. But in referring to religion in the schools, the Noble Lord the Member for Horsham and Worthing (Earl Winterton) said that the number of those attending religious service in the churches was from 15 to 20 per cent. That is the explanation of the calm atmosphere. Yet the hon. and learned Member for Montgomery regretted the fact that this decline had taken place in the attendance at religious services. I have been round many parts of England, week-end after week-end, visiting places and talking with people, and hearing stories of places where there is an English Church school to which


all the children go, and yet not a parent goes to the English Church—because the parents are sensible. We have had a discussion here on a Water Bill with the Tories demanding nationalisation and now we are having a discussion on education and a Socialist is opposing nationalisation. He wants private enterprise in education. The one thing above everything else which should appeal to every Member of this Committee no matter what his particular creed may be is that in every locality there should be a school directed by the State and the local authority. We have to educate our children to become proper citizens of the country and the way to do it is by means of schools controlled by the State.

Mr. Ivor Thomas: Does my hon. Friend favour the Scottish system? I at least would strongly like to see the Scottish system in this country.

Mr. Gallacher: We cannot get the Scottish system because the Church of England has masses of schools which it ought not to have, but I will leave that matter. In each locality there should be a State school with State control; that is very important for the education of the children.

Mr. Bull: Would the hon. Member speak up, as we cannot hear him on this side of the Committee. I know that he will not object.

Mr. Gallacher: I have no abjection to speaking up, but I am certain that no matter how loudly I speak or how intelligently I talk it will have no effect on the hon. Member.

Mr. Bull: I regret to inform the hon. Gentleman that he is perfectly correct in that assumption.

Mr. Gallacher: The hon. Member does not have to tell me that I am correct, I know that I am. The proposal put forward in the Amendment is a simple proposition which should be accepted by every Member of the Committee, and all these talks about dividing up our innocent children into Anglicans, Baptists, the "Wee frees" and split peas and all the rest of it, should not be allowed to enter into a question of this kind. Those who have taken up the question of introducing religion where education is concerned do not seem to understand what religion is. Religion is not a "sublime morality"; it is the correct way to salvation, and if

it is the right way to salvation they should not be tolerant of those who are going the wrong way. It is not education which makes the hon. Member opposite a Baptist or my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Canmarthen (Mr. M. Hughes) a Welsh Calvinistic Methodist. Education is for fitting our children to become well educated. There is education of a character which distorts the mind as it develops. Education is for producing well-educated, clean-living, moral citizens of this world. I will hazard the remark that if we, through State-owned or controlled schools, make the children well-educated, clean-living and moral citizens of the world, we need have no fear of their chances in any other world. You can give them Anglicism, Methodism or any religion you like, but if you do not make thorn good citizens of this world I question whether they will be accepted as good citizens in any other world. Every Member of this Committee is responsible for deciding this question. In every part of the country, particularly where there is one school, it should be a school under the direction of this House and of the Board of Education and the local authorities who represent the wishes of this House. That is the position. We should not leave the schools or the children as the playthings of the various promoters of Paradise. We should control and direct the schools in such a way that they produce the best citizens.

Professor Gruffydd: I have one or two things to say on this very thorny question, and I suppose I should be very unpopular in my own country if I allowed the Debate to pass without saying a word from the Nonconformist point of view. Though I support the Amendment, I would rather that it should be lost than that this Debate should introduce into the national life of this country any more sectarian bitterness than there is at present.
I agree with some hon. Members who have spoken that this old sectarian bitterness is a thing of the past, but I also agree with the last speaker that a good deal of it is not due to conviction but rather to the fact that we do not care quite so much about these things as we used to care in the past.
It has been suggested that the single-school area problem could be solved partly by transport, by taking children


who do not wish to be educated in a Church of England school to another school in the neighbourhood. I do not know about England, but in Wales that simply would not work, because if you were to take these children from the single-school area in Wales there would be no children left in many of the schools. It is not a question, in many of the single-school areas, of a large proportion of Church of England children and a small proportion of Nonconformist children in the same area. The problem in rural parts of Wales, and most schools are in those rural areas, is that of a Church of England school in an area which is not only predominantly Nonconformist but practically 99 per cent. Nonconformist, and transport would not settle that. Those areas have certainly a very great claim to get consideration on the lines of this Amendment. My second point is this. The difference between the Nonconformist parent and the Church of England parent with regard to the education of his children is not merely a difference of theological creed. I do not think that mere theology and mere creed are going to trouble us very much. The doctrine of the Church of England—

Mr. Pickthorn: As one university Burgess to another, may I interrupt to ask the hon. Member if he remembers that in university tradition, theology is the queen of the sciences?

Professor Gruffydd: I have always regarded theology as the old lady of the sciences, because we always give her our seat. Anyway it is not so much a matter of theological creed as the atmosphere of the Church school. The atmosphere of the Church school is definitely different from that of the ordinary country school, and I think my friends in the Church of England would say that they welcome that difference, that they have worked for that difference, that they wish that difference to persist. The Church of England school has a certain atmosphere which the others have not. It is very much like the famous answer of the person who was asked in the Divinity examinations at Oxford "What is the difference between the Gospel of St. John and the other Gospels?" He said, "In the Gospel of St. John there is a note of piety which is entirely lacking in the others." There is in the Church of England schools

—I say that to their credit—a certain note of piety which is entirely lacking in the county schools, and we want it to be lacking. Our view is not the sacramental view of religion which the Church of England, especially the high Anglicans, take of religion. We do not wish our children to be brought up with that sacramental view. We wish them to be brought up in the clear and wideswept realm of conscience alone, and it is only right that our children should be allowed to be brought up in such an atmosphere. To quote the same argument that has been given so often here by my Roman Catholic friends, because we pay the rates towards education we want our children to be educated in the way we wish.

Mr. Furness: These matters which concern religion in the schools are difficult matters for a Member who certainly cannot claim to be an expert. There are all sorts of technical questions involved which others understand better than myself, and there are also very deep and fundamental feelings which I am sure it is a good thing should exist in this country. It is a good thing that Members of Parliament and parents should feel strongly about their own particular religious beliefs. I can speak as one who has some family connection with Nonconformity. Nonconformists feel vary strongly about this issue, and so do Roman Catholics and Church of England people, and it is right and proper that we should. I understand, too, the point of view of those who say that you cannot separate religion from other teachings. You cannot say you will have a quarter of an hour every morning to deal with religion and then the rest of the day you will have nothing at all to do with it. I cannot understand how you could teach English history unless you have some religious outlook upon it. The whole history of Henry VIII and the Reformation, for instance, must be coloured by your view of whether you believe the Reformation was good or bad.
This Amendment, which seeks to deal with the single-school area and to lay down that there the school shall be, what I might call without offence, neutral in religious matters and not be affiliated to any particular Church, has, I think, a corollary which I hope I may venture to point out. In this country, where we have so many different Churches, some


near together, others far apart—there are many organised religious bodies in this country, a dozen or possibly more, all branches of the Christian faith, to say nothing of the Jews—we cannot in a single country village have a school which will suit all particular religious beliefs. It is really quite impossible. You cannot have a Baptist, a Church of England, a Raman Catholic and other schools to suit everybody living in a village of some few hundred inhabitants. So I feel there is great force in that argument which says that as you cannot suit everybody, you should try to have something which does not offend the belief of any particular person. The corollary is this, that where you do have enough people of a particular branch of the Christian Church, there those people should be entitled to have their own school. That is a corollary which I think I may say to my Nonconformist friends hangs with this Amendment, if the principle is conceded that where there are not enough children of one particular faith to fill a school, there the school should be neutral. The corollary that should be accepted is that, where, as in towns, there are enough Church of England people, Nonconformists, or Roman Catholics—I also speak for them as I represent them in the North of England, where they have so large a community with so many children, many of them very poor people who cannot do much to help themselves—the State should provide the whole cost of the school.
I venture to say these things—I hope I have not hurt or offended any one's feelings—because it seems to me the common-sense view of it and we must get away from all this idea of teaching religion in schools at certain hours to some children and other children entering at different hours. That must be most embarrassing to teachers and hurtful to the children because, when one was at school, one felt how agonising it was to stand out as being different. We must get away from all that, and recognise the plain simple principle that you have to deal with this matter on quite a commonsense basis, that you cannot provide a school for every child according to his or her religious belief—there are all sorts of small communities with only two or three adherents—but that where you have large communities of one faith there you should provide for the religious teaching which their parents desire.

Mr. Stokes: May I say a word on the Catholic attitude towards this Amendment? In order that we shall not be misunderstood may I first correct a false impression that was given—quite unintentionally, I am sure—by the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Mr. Jewson)—who said that this Bill has been generally agreed. I do not want to be controversial about it, but the fact is that the Bill was agreed between two main bodies and that the Roman Catholics were left out, in the first instance. If there is an impression that we accepted this Bill in toto that is not the case.

Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: Is the hon. Member speaking as an individual or for Catholics generally?

Mr. Stokes: I am speaking with the authority of the Catholic community.

Mr. Butler: I think that for the sake of the record, I ought to correct the hon. Member's statement that the Catholics were left out. That is not the case at all. I do not desire that they Shall say that they agree, or anything else, but I do say that the schemes and discussions were conducted with absolute fairness to all denominations. All received our schemes and all saw them. There was no intention whatsoever of leaving anybody out.

Mr. Stokes: I accept that explanation. We, having so strongly in our minds the rights of parents in this matter, naturally have great sympathy with the Nonconformists in the difficulty in which they find themselves. We are in the difficulty of not knowing, generally speaking, what concessions we shall get. But in regard to our attitude on the single-school areas we would be quite prepared to hand over our single-schools—I admit they are only a handful, some 13 or 14—provided adequate provision was made for proper religious instruction for our children. If they could be transferred where possible, to other Catholic schools not too far distant, that should be done. We see the difficulty and are perfectly prepared to make that contribution in order to assist.

Mr. Butler: I am very much indebted to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Montgomery (Mr. C. Davies) for raising what is a big issue in our consideration of the Bill. While it has been mentioned in our previous Debates, this


is an occasion when it comes to the front and, I do not doubt, it will be mentioned again before we have finished. I am glad to take this opportunity of answering the arguments which have been put forward and explaining why the Government could not accept the Amendment as it has been put down on the Order Paper. The atmosphere in which our discussions have been proceeding to-day differs very much from that of the Debates of 1902, and while I have never claimed that the general outline of the plan as set out in the Bill is ideal, or that it solves a problem such as this, I claim that we are to-day considering educational problems and the problems of religious instruction in a favourable atmosphere and in a calm mood. That, at any rate, is one achievement we have managed to reach in our own generation.
The plan stands together as a whole, and although, as has been said, the Government are relying on the Committee to help them to improve the Bill, certain Amendments would cause so violent an overturn of the balance that it would be impossible to maintain the general plan. The reason this Amendment would cause such an overturn of the balance is not so much that it is unjust—indeed, the claim is perfectly reasonable—but because the whole basis of the plan as set out in the religious Clauses we are now approaching, gives to the managers or governors of a school the option of choosing between aided or controlled status if they are an auxiliary school and, in certain circumstances, of becoming a special agreement school by the resuscitation of the 1936 Act.
That is the basis of the scheme but this Amendment suggests, again perfectly reasonably, that it shall be the Minister who by order decides whether the scheme is to be controlled or aided. Therefore at one stroke the Amendment would result in the balance of choice which is given to the managers or governors being removed and the Minister deciding himself by a definite order at the centre. As we believe that this question of the ownership of schools and religious instruction is an extremely difficult one the Government would hesitate very much, taking the impartial view that we try to take, before we take away from managers and governors the option they have and we should not like to lay it down that the Minister

shall himself decide to make a certain school controlled.
Hon. Members will desire to know, therefore, how we propose to allay the anxieties about the single-school area which is one of the classical problems of the world of education and which has been under consideration. First, the Government would welcome any conversations that proceed between the interested parties. There has been much greater coming-together between Anglicans and the Free Churches than has been seen for a generation in the course of the last two years. I myself shortly after taking office received probably the most imposing joint deputation of Anglicans and Free Churchmen, including representatives of Wales, that any President has ever received, and only during the last month there have been meetings in this City organised on a joint basis by Anglicans and Free Churchmen. Forty years ago that would have been impossible. So we can add to the modest claim that I have made that, in the next few months, I hope, the Bill will remove that poison from the relationship between the Free Churches and the Anglican Church and the Church in Wales. I cannot claim that it has removed every problem and I must appeal to the representatives of these great denominations to continue with their contacts because, if the basis of the Bill is to be an option in this religious question, and there is to be an element of freedom and diversity, which is our British way of doing things, probably the most effective way of solving the problem will be by agreement between the parties. I appeal, therefore, to the denominations and the leaders of the Churches to keep together and, if they reach any sort of understanding, the Government will at any time be ready to give it proper consideration. But we have not been willing to rely solely upon the coming together of these parties who have been separated for so long. There are in the Bill certain Clauses which I think will help to ease this position.
In considering Clause 14 itself, I must state it as the Government's Opinion that many auxiliary schools will, in fact, become controlled. I am not so uninitiated as to attempt to give an exact estimate but, taking the situation in Wales as referred to by the representative of the University of Wales, I think it is certain


that in some of the smaller schools controlled status will be found most convenient, and in that case, the problem will be very much eased. As regards for other parts, the hon. Member for Montgomery mentioned the percentage in the English counties. I understand that in many cases the schools will find the control offer is such a good one that they will find it worth accepting. I think the device of controlled schools is one of the features of the Bill which should commend itself to the Committee, because it is through that feature that people may feel that we are trying to ease some of the administrative and teaching problems which centre round the dual system as we know it now.
Quite apart from that, there will be some 4,000 schools which may remain aided, and we have therefore in Clause 27, to which no one has made reference, to insert a proviso making it possible to re-enact Section 12 of the 1936 Act, by which parents of pupils in attendance at an aided school, can obtain syllabus instruction if they so desire. If the managers do not provide the syllabus instruction, the authorities have power to provide it in the school. That means that one of the first difficulties of Free Church parents is removed, because, even in an aided school in a single-school area, it is possible for them under the Clause to obtain the syllabus instruction they desire. Although the Committee may want to discuss that Clause, to amend it and to improve it, that does mean that there is a provision that helps to remove one of our major difficulties. There is another Clause—Clause 53—which deals with transport. I am not going to rely solely on that Clause to solve the single-school area problem, but when we come to that Clause it will be possible to say that there is provision in the law of education which will enable the Minister to come in and help make arrangements for transport in certain areas. It will not take children from one valley to another in Wales, because that would be impossible locomotion, but in England it will enable children in contiguous districts who want to attend a county school to do so.
These are some indications of what the Government have in mind for dealing with this problem. We shall be discussing it, and I have no doubt that, with the ingenuity

of hon. Members, we shall be discussing it more than once, in the course of the passage of the Bill. I therefore ask hon. Members not to press the Amendment but to realise that the Government feel that we have, at least, made some progress in education if we can consider this matter in a reasonable atmosphere, and that we have already, through the controlled schools and these other devices, taken several long steps towards the solution of a time-honoured British problem.

Mr. Edmund Harvey: I think the President is entirely right when he says that we have to-day a far more reasonable atmosphere than Parliament has ever had within living memory when discussing this important question. For that we must be profoundly thankful. I do not hold with my hon. Friend the Member for West Fife (Mr. Gallacher) that this atmosphere has just come about through indifference. I believe that there has been a real deepening of understanding among Christian people, in spite of all differences in denominational outlook, and not only among Protestants; I think that this also applies to the deeper respect that a great number of Protestants feel for their Catholic fellow citizens, even when they do not share their views. That is something for which Parliament and the country should be profoundly grateful. I hope it will enable the President to get over some of the difficulties that still lie ahead which are even greater perhaps than the difficulties raised by this Amendment. Having said that, however, I must say that I am sorry the President has not felt able to meet the spirit of the Amendment more fully than he has managed to do. He has admitted that the claim which is made by the Amendment is in itself just and right. The only reason for refusing it, apart from any technical grounds, is the difficulty of upsetting the nice balance which he has succeeded in building up and which forms the basis of the Bill. One is bound to regret that there has not been a fuller effort made to meet what I am afraid will still remain, in spite of the friendly outlook of leaders of the Church, a real difficulty in many districts.
In a number of rural districts there are incumbents who have not the same outlook, and who are the masters of their schools. To some extent they exert a kind of authority over the teachers and the


children which the leaders of the Church would not wish to see maintained, yet which does interfere with the freedom which we want to see in school life, and is felt as a real grievance by many parents. That situation will remain in some of these cases, if schools in single-school areas continue as aided schools and do not come into the national system fully, as controlled schools, when they would still be able to give their own special teaching to all children whose parents desired it. They would be an integral part of the national system and would provide a happier basis, I am sure, for the life of the village and the small community in the single-school areas than will be possible if the school remains as a place of entrenched privilege for a limited section of the community—sometimes for a minority of the community, as has already been pointed out.
It is not merely a question of Wales. There are, in many rural districts in England, cases where the majority of the villagers are Methodists and the only school is a Church school. It may happen that there is a broad-minded, wide-hearted clergyman, who has got over all the difficulties, and that the grievance is therefore not felt, but there are other cases where a narrow-minded, autocratic parson insists upon his right to come into the school. A case came to my notice in which the children of Nonconformists were terrified in a village school by the parson's threats as to what was going to happen to them in a future life if they did not fully accept what he felt to be the one way of salvation. We ought not to have that sort of thing as part of the national system. I think the President ought to go further and try to remove this very real difficulty. We do not want to see any hardship imposed on others, and I do not believe that it would be imposed by the Amendment, which has been very widely drawn. The terms are made quite deliberately wide, because it is to apply
provided there is not a county school available within reasonable distance.
That allows for questions of transport to be taken into account. I hope, if the President is not able to accept the Amendment at this stage, that he may consider the possibility of inserting words at another stage which would meet, in a way which he has not yet been able to do, a

grievance that is very real, and that will remain as a serious defect in a very great Measure, which, taken as a whole, I am sure we all welcome most heartily.

Mr. A. Bevan: I want to apologise to the Minister. I could not hear the whole of his reply, as I was called out of the Committee at that moment, but I am informed by my hon. Friends behind me that he found it impossible to accept the Amendment or to make any concession whatever to the principles of the Amendment. There are two considerations we have to bear in mind in this matter. In recent years we have become accustomed to Ministers standing at that Box and telling us, if not in so many words, that arrangements have been made with bodies outside the House of Commons, compromises have been entered into, and that therefore Amendments cannot be accepted because, if they were, those compromises would be upset. It is true that, in the case of religious organisation, there is a stronger tradition for compromises outside the House than with respect to many other legislative Measures. But even here we have now to consider whether it is worth while the House of Commons discussing a Bill on which no substantial Amendment can be accepted by the Government. In other words every single consideration of any substance which may be brought forward in the Committee stage of this Bill is of no importance whatsoever in its effect on the legislative structure of the Bill, because it cannot be accepted by the Government without invalidating the compromises that have been agreed to before the Bill started its history in this Chamber.

Mr. Butler: If the hon. Member had heard my speech he would have noticed that the inflection of my argument was slightly different, and he would have been the first to perceive it. I did not base my claim that we could not make the alteration on an arrangement made outside the House. I have been a Parliamentarian myself too long to do that, and it is my view that it is for the House of Commons to decide on matters put before them. What I did say was that, on balance, this scheme was so arranged with regard to Church schools that there was an option for managers. There being that option makes it difficult for me to say


that there shall be an Order oversetting that option.

Mr. Bevan: I would have more respect for the right hon. Gentleman if he had dealt more bluntly with what I have been accusing him of doing. He has spent too many years in the Foreign Office. The right hon. Gentleman informs us that in all the circumstances, the House of Commons is sovereign and therefore not bound by any compromise arrived at, and that, as a good House of Commons man, he stands by that principle in the abstract and throws it all over in the concrete. The fact is—and I challenge the right hon. Gentleman on it—that he has not accepted and will not accept any substantial Amendment to his Bill. He will find, on each occasion, that each particular argument has no substance in it, although the reasons he gives, will have nothing whatever to do with what causes him to resist the Amendment. I say that we are wasting Parliamentary time, therefore, in having these long, barren discussions about a matter to which the Government are now irretrievably committed. Furthermore, we have had, on many occasions, special interests pleading their case in the House of Commons and supporting the Minister because already they have had their share in fashioning the legislation and we have no share at all. That is the position to which we have been reduced. As I say, there is, traditionally, more reason for it in the case of education than any other, because of the very deep feelings aroused by a subject of this sort. But I am bound to say that as far as I am concerned, the more the Committee stage proceeds, the more it is apparent to any objective observer that it is not a big Bill at all.

The Chairman: If the hon. Member will forgive me, I would point out that he has not yet addressed a single word to the Amendment.

Mr. Bevan: I am coming to that. Certainly, I have first spoken about the reasons why we could not accept the Amendment, so I was speaking about the Amendment. In the second place, I suggest, we are driven to the position where it is shown that the reason the right hon. Gentleman cannot accept the Amendment is that the whole thing is a niggling compromise, which makes no important change at all in our educational structure.

In areas where there is no alternative county school, where there are single schools, and mostly Church schools, the Amendment desires that the option of the authority shall be taken away, and the school made a controlled school. That is not a very startling Amendment. It would not make many fundamental changes in the Bill, because, even in controlled schools, there will be an agreed syllabus, to which the Nonconformists and the Church of Engand have already agreed. So, in a single-school area, which, after all, is the area about which we are deeply concerned, all that would be done would be to give to the religious bodies concerned all the benefits of that masterly compromise which the right hon. Gentleman has arranged for areas that are not single-school areas.
Why does he not want to offer the benefits of this compromise to the single-school area if it is good? I think it is bad myself. How on earth you could put religion into commission like that. I do not know: how someone can decide what percentage of the Deity can be put in, I do not know. We will leave that to the conference; it will be an extraordinary conference when it meets. But the right hon. Gentleman has made a compromise of that sort, and has got the agreement of the religious bodies to it. All we are seeking to do is to apply that compromise to the single-school areas. For myself, I think the Church ought to have nothing at all to do with religious education in the schools.
I am fundamentally in favour of secular education. I think it is impudent for any body of citizens to attempt to lay down principles of religious instruction. They are so highly controversial that no body of lay people can come to any agreement about them at all, and it is bunkum and humbug to suggest that any number of persons can come to an agreement on the form of the religion which is to be taught to anybody; that is a matter for private judgment. This whole Debate has become so saturated with humbug that it is almost impossible to use plain language.
But if it is desired that a compromise of this sort should be incorporated in our legislation relating to schools, why cannot it be accepted for single-school areas? Because what is desired in these areas is to sustain, promote, and foster the Toryism which centres on the Church


school in a single-school area. Why not cut out all the humbug, and say exactly what we want in this matter? All the right hon. Gentleman has done is to say that this will upset the delicate balance already arrived at. Of course, the Church of England is having its way. It gets the biggest bite out of this Bill everywhere. I suggest that the Church of England, not by any positive emotional organisation but by the enormous influence which it has behind the scenes, by the influence it has on Members on that side of the Committee—secret, furtive influence—[Interruption.]

Hon. Members: Withdraw.

Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: It is not a trade union.

Mr. Bevan: It is no use for hon. Members to make that reproach to me, because I am no more influenced by the unions—

Mr. Nicholson: I was not trying to make a reproach of it.

Mr. Bevan: What I am saying is that the Church of England is a great and powerful organisation and institution, with which the Conservative Party is very closely associated.

Mr. Nicholson: The hon. Member said a great deal more than that. He used the words "secret" and "furtive," and I think that is an unworthy implication.

Mr. Bevan: No, no. Hon. Members always attach emotional significance to certain adjectives. There is nothing immoral about being furtive. The hon. Member should learn his English properly. I have never heard that there is anything immoral about being secret. All I know is that these influences are at work. The fact of the matter is that these influences have been at work and everybody knows it, and what is the use of denying it? In the matter of these children of Nonconformists in these areas, there has been no attempt on the part of Nonconformist organisations to arouse—

Mr. Magnay: I wish there had been.

Mr. Bevan: All right, but I myself do not desire to see this engulfed in controversy.

Mr. Magnay: I wish they had been more in earnest.

Mr. Bevan: I want to say that it looks to me as if the Nonconformists are being blackmailed. Because they have been quiet about it, they find that an arrangement has been made which leaves an enormous proportion of Nonconformist children in these single-school areas still under the control of the Church school and they still have to send their children there. I have been at meetings held in rural areas on this subject. In most of these districts, you find that there are chapels and churches. There is no chapel school, but there is a Church school. The chapel people in these areas have to send their children to the Church schools, although sociologically, they have already naturally divided themselves into other different religious divisions, and the educational system has pot followed that division. It insists upon the traditional practice, although the citizens have long ago detached themselves from that homogeneous condition. Many of them have no religious association with institutions at all, or have long ago divided up into Nonconformist and Church of England. Are we, in this Bill, recognising that natural distinction which has already spontaneously arisen in the countryside? Of course not. We are perpetuating, on the whole, the domination of the Church of England school in these areas, and I therefore suggest that the position taken up by the right hon. Gentleman is untenable. It exploits the docility, in this matter, of the Nonconformists. The right hon. Gentleman resists an Amendment which will not, fundamentally, affect the structure of his Bill, because we are not insisting that they should be only secular schools—although we could insist upon that—but are insisting that he should apply to the single-school area, the terms of the compromise which pervades the rest of the Bill. In resisting it, the right hon. Gentleman reveals clearly what has been happening behind the scenes, and in this sense, I may mention that relations have been set up between the Government and the Church of England which prevent the Minister listening to arguments in the House of Commons.
Motion made, and Question, "That the Chairman do report Progress, and ask leave to sit again," [Major Sir James Edmondson] put, and agreed to.
Committee report Progress: to sit again upon the next Sitting Day.

Orders of the Day — SUPREME COURT OF JUDICATURE (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for consideration of Lords Amendment read.

Motion made, and Question proposed, "That the Lords Amendment be now considered."

Question put, and agreed to.

Lords Amendment considered accordingly.

SCHEDULE

Lords Amendment: In page 2, line 45, after "may", insert "with his consent."

The Attorney-General (Sir Donald Somervell): I beg to move, "That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said Amendment."
This is wholly an uncontroversial Amendment. It is made to the paragraph of the Scheme which provides that a puisne judge of the High Court may be transferred at the direction of the Lord Chancellor from one Division to another. The words to be inserted provide that the transfer cannot be made without the consent of the judge to be transferred. It was, nevertheless, contemplated that his consent would be obtained, but it has been thought desirable to make provision for it in the Bill.

Question put, and agreed to.

Orders of the Day — EMERGENCY POWERS (DEFENCE) (CHARGES)

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That the Coal (Charges) (Amendment) (No. 1) Order, 1944, dated 3rst January, 1944, made by the Treasury under Section 2 of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, 1939, a copy of which Order was presented to this house on 3rd February, be approved."—[Mr. Tom Smith.]

Mr. Foster: Before this Order is approved by the House I would like to raise one or two matters in connection with the administration of the fund and certain abuses of the fund by the coal-owners. It was admitted by the Minister of Fuel and Power, in reply to a question I put to him last week, that these abuses exist, and he stated that he was doing his best to check them. I will quote the reply which he gave to a supplementary question, which I put to him on that occasion. He said:
I am not denying that there has been some abuse of the system but it has been

greatly tightened, and will, I hope, be tightened up still further.
Later on he stated in reply to another question:
if my hon. Friend had listened to my previous supplementary answer, he would have heard that I said we are aware of certain abuses and are doing our best to check them"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 17th February; col. 347, Vol. 397.]
I have been very much concerned about the abuses of this particular fund which are taking place in the coalfields. Frankly, it has almost become a racket. The managers at the collieries—and probably they have had instructions from their directors—are taking advantage of every opportunity to reduce their costs of production at the expense of this fund.
The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power asked me to supply him with examples of what is taking place in the coalfields. I have supplied him with one example which is being gone into, but I want to make a general assertion first. It is that when there is a fall in output on any particular day, or during the week, at any colliery in the British coalfields due to any cause—this applies not to one particular colliery but to every pit and colliery in the British coalfields—the management immediately try to reduce their costs of production, or do reduce them, by sending men home in the middle of the shift, and also men who come on the succeeding shift, and then make application to this fund for their wages to be paid. This fund, I should explain, makes provision in the first place for a payment to the coal owners to make up certain average profits, the formulas of which have been agreed upon. If they fail to make those profits, any colliery company or scheduled undertaking which makes such an application is described as a necessitous undertaking.
I want first to deal with the position at those particular collieries. What happens when a colliery becomes a necessitous undertaking? In the first place there is no motive or incentive for that colliery company to produce the maximum output of coal, and they use this fund not to increase output but in order to heighten roads, drive tunnels, buy machinery, or to put the pit into as good a position as they can put it from the production standpoint to prepare for the post-war position. Not only that, but at these collieries no matter what amount of labour the Minister


Minister of Labour may supply, whether it be the Bevin boys or anybody else, at those particular collieries they can absorb all the labour that is given to them without showing any increase whatever in the production of coal, and they use that fund for that purpose. This is not a wild or an exaggerated statement; it is a fact, because we have ample evidence of it, and what I am concerned about in the main is that there does not appear to be—I will not say any check, but any effective check upon the applications that are made for this particular purpose.
I understand, from a reply given to me by the Minister of Fuel and Power, that applications are made first of all from the colliery, and that the information as to why the application is being made is supplied by the colliery company itself in the first place. It passes through the accountants to the colliery company, and is submitted to other bodies, and eventually it reaches the authorities in London and the money is paid over. I submit that unless there is some effective check at the source, then the colliery companies can exploit this fund to their hearts content, and, as I said at the beginning, they are doing it. To give the House some idea of the extent of the exploitation of this Fund—again in reply to a question which I put in the House last week—we were informed that there are 84 necessitous undertakings in the British coalfields, and that the money which is being paid out of this Fund is approximately £4,500,000, which has been paid out to those colliery companies who are described as necessitous undertakings. I want to know from my hon. Friend whether the Ministry of Fuel and Power have satisfied themselves that that £4,500,000 has been spent on the purposes for which the Fund has been created. I do not think it has. I believe that the money has been spent to further the interests of those who have made application for financial support from the Fund.
There is another matter I want to deal with, that in connection with the other part of this Fund from which the guaranteed wage to the miners is paid. The exploitation by necessitous undertakings is not to be compared with the exploitation which is going on in the payment of the guaranteed wage to men who are available for work when work is not available. I say again, deliberately, that there is not a pit in the whole of the mining industry

which is not exploiting that Fund. Pits are doing it in order to reduce their costs of production and to make the highest possible profits. I could give the House many examples from my own personal experience and knowledge, but perhaps one or two will suffice. Recently at a colliery near my home something happened to the steam arrangements. A pipe had become choked, with the result that the winding engine could not continue to wind coal. This happened at 12.30. Winding would have gone on until 2.30. Two hours' output was lost. What were the instructions the manager gave to the workmen that day? They were that all men working underground, irrespective of what job they were engaged on, must be sent out of the pit. So these men were sent to the surface by the return shaft. But that was not the full measure of it. Even surface workers, employed on stacking timber, tipping dirt, repairing machines and looking after lamps, were sent home. Yet all were paid that part of the guaranteed wage because it was said that work was not available. That was done by the pit in order to reduce their costs of production. However, that is still not the end of the story. By 2.30 this winding gear was put right and a shift of 150 men came on in the afternoon. Still the men were sent back and were paid the guaranteed wage. This was done by the company in order to save their costs of production for that day because they had lost two hours' output.
I will give another example. On two succeeding days recently there was a shortage of coal wagons about 10 o'clock each day, which is about the half way time in the shift. The manager gave instructions, when there were no further wagons to be filled on the surface, that all the men had to be sent out of the pit, and the men on the surface were sent home as well, because they would have had to pay their wages. By sending them home they could recover the wages from the guaranteed wages fund. The fund was never set up for this purpose. The public are paying 8s. a ton in order to create this Fund, which is being exploited by the coal owners for their own purposes. I have said it is a ramp and I still think it is, and I am not satisfied that the check of the Ministry of Fuel and Power on this exploitation is efficient or sufficient. It is a question of setting up machinery so that the Ministry may


know what the money is being paid for. The owners say they are not making profits, but they are. Even if they become necessitous undertakings they still have a certain average profit.
I realise fully the responsibility of the statements that I have made, and I hope the Parliamentary Secretary will give me an assurance that something effective will be done. It is not sufficient to say that the returns from the collieries are chocked up. You cannot check claims in London. You can check the claims that are made on the information that comes in with them but, if it is to be effective, it must be done at the colliery. The disputes that are arising in the mining industry, these unofficial stoppages have caused a loss of output amounting to 223,000 tons, or at the rate of 2,250,000 tons in a year. That is a very serious state of affairs. I would not have taken up the time of the House if I did not look upon the matter very seriously. I know that what I have said will convince the Parliamentary Secretary and I hope he will convey it to the Minister.

Mr. Butcher: I would like to express the hope that the Parliamentary Secretary will give some information on how this Coal Charges Order affects the ordinary consumer, because the prices paid by him for coal have advanced to an enormous degree since the outbreak of war. There is a feeling that the more money and the more legislation we put into this industry the less coal we get out of it. We are very eager to hear how this Order will affect the ordinary working man and woman. Does it mean that there is to be another increase in the near future?

Mr. Fraser: My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Foster) has rendered a useful service to the country in initiating a Debate on this important matter. He has indicated that this Fund is being used for a purpose for which it was not intended and shown the folly of allowing people to administer the Fund who have no interest in looking after it. He has proved that managers at the collieries are left with too much latitude in determining how much money they will require from this Fund for their undertakings. They are responsible to the people who employ and pay them, and it is obvious that in meeting their weekly outlays at their collieries, whether it be on the payment

of guaranteed wages to workmen who have not been employed, or on other matters, the more they can take from the Fund the less has to come from the accounts of the collieries which employ them. They will not hesitate to send men home if by so doing they can serve the interests of the companies employing them. We have the responsibility of looking into this matter very intimately to see whether the position cannot be rectified. I hope that the Minister of Fuel and Power will make an honest and sincere attempt to do that.
I could, like my hon. Friend, give instances where the Fund has been abused. We hear about stoppages. I can remember a dispute at one of the big collieries in Lanarkshire over the administration of this Fund. The company kept four or six men extra to their needs in case there should be so many absentees out of the colliery. They were sent home every day and they were paid from this Fund. That in itself is an abuse. The Minister told my hon. Friend the other day that there had been abuses, but that they were being checked, that the position was being bettered, and he hoped that it would be further bettered in the near future. My complaint is that under the present scheme the checking can only be done by accountants from the regional offices. That must be all wrong, and I submit that the checking can only be operated at the pit. We have the machinery there to do it. We have a committee set up at every colliery and it is the servant of the Ministry of Fuel and Power. I refer to the pit production committee. It has never been asked to take any responsibility in this matter, but it could be very useful. It could get down single-mindedly, as it is intended it should do, to look after the interests of the industry and anything with which the Ministry is concerned at the pit. The members, who represent both sides of the industry, would apply themselves to preventing any possibility of abuse. They would be able to argue with justification, when there was a breakdown in the pit, that there was no need to send men home merely because they were not going to be able to produce coal that afternoon. They would get them on to a preparatory job, so that more coal could be produced on the following day.
The fact is that the colliery manager is afraid, under the present organisation,


that he may find it difficult to get enough from the Fund to pay those men, which makes it more difficult not to send the men home, whether they are five, or 50, or a whole colliery of 500 men. It is easier for him to send them home because he thinks it is impossible to keep them engaged at that pit, as the whole 500 men would be paid out of the Fund. It is a disgraceful state of affairs. This Fund has to be added to from time to time. I think it started at 7d. per ton; it is now 8s., and it will increase. People are wondering what is wrong with this industry. The more money we put into it the less money we get out of it. It is, significant that this Debate should have been initiated by representatives of the workpeople in the industry, because if there is any tightening of the administration of the Fund, the workers will get not one penny out of it. It is a credit to my hon. Friend that he should have initiated the Debate.
I ask the Ministry to use the production committees at the pit and to do something about this matter. Let them take an interest in it and give them some responsibility in it. After all, it is the responsibility of the Ministry of Fuel and Power. Those are the people, the technical and practical people at the colliery, who can check it. If we give these men the responsibility every penny that is claimed from the Fund ought to be claimed in the name of the pit production committee. The claim ought to be signed by the joint chairmen of the pit production committee. Very often one is the manager of the pit concerned and the other someone representing the work-people. Every penny received from the Fund by the undertaking ought to be receipted by the joint representatives concerned in the pit production committee. That is very little to ask. I know that colliery owners and the managers would probably object to any such step being taken, because, in the case of necessitous undertakings, it would mean that the men at the pit would get to know something about the finances of the particular colliery company, and they do not think that that is quite right.
I submit that it is only right, and that we ought not to allow a stupid arrangement to continue whereby the wages received by the miners are everybody's business but the profits that are derived

from the industry are the business of nobody but those who are deriving those profits. If there is no need and the undertaking is not necessitous, it will not require to have anything from the Fund and then the workpeople at the pit will not get to know anything at all about those finances. I think the case is crystal clear and the need is very urgent and obvious. I sincerely trust that the Parliamentary Secretary will be able to indicate to us that the Ministry will take any necessary steps to see to it that there are no more abuses of this Fund—at least no more abuses that can be avoided by a different administration.

Mr. Sloan: I think it is a sign of the times that there is nobody here from the other side to make any objection to this Coal Charges Fund. One does not object when it is going into one's pocket, and any constructive proposals or suggestions on this matter have to come from the miners' representatives in the districts. As the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Fraser) says, the more we can reduce this Fund the less likelihood there is that the men would get very much out of it, but it is still true that miners do not want any money out of this Fund. It is true that if they are capable and available for work and no work is found for them then they claim the right to be paid from this Fund. But very often men have done almost the hardest part of their work in rising early in the morning, being conveyed on long journeys, getting down the pit, travelling underneath to the place where they have to work and then finding no work for them and having the whole journey back again. The miner, after he is at the coalface, would rather finish his shift than walk home.
We would very much like some guarantee that this Fund is to be tightened up. The figures that have been produced show 240,000 shifts lost in one month. I wonder if the House has perceived that 240,000 shifts lost, taking the average man-shift at one ton, means that coal production is 24,000 tons down. [Interruption]—well, 213,000 tons through the fact of no work being available for these men. We hear a great deal about stoppages. We hear of the amount of output lost by stoppages—so many men at this colliery stopped, so many tons lost through their stoppage. Yet more shifts and more coal are lost from the men


being unable to secure work when they are capable and available for it than are lost through stoppages all over the country. Surely there is something radically wrong here? That is one of the things which the Parliamentary Secretary should have some cognisance of, and we ought to have a guarantee before this extra 3s. is put on to the price of coal that a tightening up is to be carried out in regard to this Fund.
The financing of necessitous undertakings also requires some investigation. When workmen have to be financed because they are necessitous they have to appear at the public assistance office or at the employment exchange. We find that a very searching examination is made before any public funds are granted. There ought surely to be just as searching an examination into the payments to these so-called necessitous undertakings. As we all know a large part of this money is going merely to help the profits of the industry. I wonder whether this House is aware that the profits of the coal owners are higher to-day than they have ever been. In Scotland profits are returned now at 2s. 6d. per ton, and one month it was 2s. 8d. When we are dealing with undertakings such as this, we should have some regard to the finance which is coming to the industry from them. The Government are merely making another charge upon the consumer—because that is where it is coming from. The Government are not making any subsidy to the mining industry in this matter. When we talk about guaranteed wages and the financing of necessitous undertakings, let us understand that it is not done by way of subsidy. It is done here by a direct charge on the consumer.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Major Milner): The hon. Member has gone very wide. I would be glad if he would connect his speech with the Motion before the House.

Mr. Sloan: Like the famous Texan pianist, I am doing my best, and, like him, I do not want to be shot. I am doing my very best to connect what I am saying with the fact that we are here today passing these charges. We are raising the charge to 8s. per ton. I was trying to make it clear to the House that this 8s. per ton is not a Government subsidy: it is a charge which is going on the consumer. An hon. Member opposite asked how it affects the consumer. It affects

the consumer to the extent that another 3s. per ton is being added to the price of coal. If so, we have a right to expect some return for it. It has already been stated that the more money the consumer throws into this industry the less coal we get out of it, because of the action of the coalowners in robbing this Fund, instead of trying to get coal. That is the point we are anxious to clear up. We are anxious to know exactly what the Department intend to do.
There is a case of a man who drew seven shifts at the colliery. He worked one of them, and six were guaranteed shifts, or what are known colloquially as Bevin shifts—he has gone down to posterity like the Belisha-beacon man. We are not opposing these changes: we expect the consumer to be robbed; but we expect that the money of which the consumer is robbed shall be spent in a decent fashion.

The Joint Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Fuel and Power (Mr. Tom Smith): Nobody could complain of the points which have been raised by my hon. Friends. Before dealing with them, there are one or two things I should say with regard to the charges which have been made against the Coal Charges Order. This Order has been brought in, increasing the coal charge from 5s. a ton to 8s. a ton, and it has been made concurrently with the average increase of 3s. in the price of coal, which was granted with effect from 1st February, 1944. One thing ought to be made clear, and that is that this Order was approved before the recent award of Lord Porter was given, and is not intended to cover that, so that, maybe, as time goes on, it will be necessary still further to increase the Coal Charges Order.

Mr. Sloan: There is no doubt about that.

Mr. Smith: With regard to the consumers, I think the hon. Member is right in raising the point, and my right hon. and gallant Friend is conscious of it. It is true that, as my hon. Friend said, there is not a subsidy; the price is being borne by the consumer. That has been the policy of the Government. We recognise, out of the experience of the last 20 years in mining, that once you put a subsidy on, you can take it away very quickly, and I think that, on balance, we have pursued


the better policy. All the increases have gone on to the consumer of coal. I cannot guarantee that there is going to be any reduction, but this extra 3s. is needed because there are additional costs to be met from the Coal Charges Account.
I want, if I may, to deal as fully as I can with the complaints made and give the House an assurance of what has actually been done to meet the charges. I think I am right in saying that, when the first Essential Work Order came before the House, from that Box I pointed out that it would have to be watched in order to see that, as time went on, it was not being abused to pay wages that should come from the ordinary colliery finance. I stressed that point considerably in speaking on the Essential Work Order some time in 1941. My right hon. Friend did say the other day that he was conscious that there had been some abuses of this Essential Work Order guaranteed wage. I think there is no doubt that there has. As a result of information supplied to me, particularly by the hon. Member for Wigan (Mr. Foster), we have, only to-day, again had a discussion with regard to it, and I have indicated to the Ministry what the complaints are. I want to give the House an assurance that instructions have been sent out to Regional Controllers that their Production Directors and Labour Directors should have an examination where there is the slightest possibility of the Essential Work Order being abused. It is very difficult to deal with a general charge but, if hon. Members will specify the collieries which they have in mind, as my hon. Friend has done to me in the last few days, we can have inquiries made on the spot, and I agree with the hon. Member for Hamilton (Mr. Fraser) that the real place to check is at the pit. I can assure the House that we are endeavouring to see that there is no unnecessary abuse of this Fund.

Mr. Foster: Whilst appreciating what the Parliamentary Secretary has said on the steps being taken, may I ask him to explain what steps they take in the individual case, which is happening every day, and whether there is any check on the number of men that an employer can send home if output is reduced?

Mr. J. J. Lawson: Why should it be necessary for the Minister to wait until complaints come in?

Mr. Smith: I did not say we wait for complaints. If an hon. Member has a specific case and we get the names, it can be handled quicker than by a general complaint. I asked the hon. Member for Wigan last week to specify the colliery, and an immediate investigation would be made. I want to assure him that it is being made. All that we can do to prevent these abuses will be done.

Mr. Foster: What about the individual case?

Mr. Smith: I do not know quite how we should handle the individual case. We have been in touch with the Regional organisations to have examinations made where these abuses are taking place, and some action will, no doubt, be taken.
Let us be frank. Many hon. Members opposite have worked in the pit, and they and I know exactly what is taking place with regard to "Bevin's window" at some pits. There is no doubt that it is not fair. My hon. Friend mentioned the question of the calling of men back when there is a stoppage of work when the engine breaks down, or there is a shortage of wagons. All that is not fair. Any colliery company that does that should be proved to be guilty of an abuse. My hon. Friend mentioned the position about development work underground. He alleges that colliery companies are getting money from the Necessitous Undertakings Fund and using a portion of it for development work underground for postwar purposes. I can tell him that there were inquiries made months ago with regard to particular pits. The only way in which you can check that sort of thing is not by inspecting colliery books on the surface, but by having men go down the pit to see actually what is being done. I assure the House frankly that my right hon. and gallant Friend has no desire to see any portion of the Coal Charges Account abused in any shape or form and steps are being taken to check these things.

Mr. Oldfield: Through the production committees?

Mr. Smith: It needs something more than production committees; somebody should go down the pit who knows what a pit really is and ascertain whether the work is really necessary, or whether it is being done for some future advantage. That can only be checked at the pit.


These things can be more effectively checked through the regional organisation than in any other way. There is the basic question to be answered when application is made for money to be paid out of the Necessitous Undertakings Fund. Is the pit necessary in the national interest? That is the fundamental question that has to be asked. In my capacity as a Member of Parliament representing a constituency before the Ministry of Fuel and Power was set up, I had to approach my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. Grenfell), who was then Secretary for Mines, with regard to certain pits that were likely to go out of production. The one question that had to be answered was, "Are these pits necessary in the national interest?" On that question being answered properly, the money was found, and the pit continued to work. Obviously, nobody wants to see any abuses of the Fund, and I can assure the House again that every effort is being made to see that none of this Fund is being exploited. It is only fair to say that this Coal Charges Fund is the medium through which a large number of things are being paid for. I do not think that the House would desire me to go into too much detail with regard to the actual amounts that are being paid, but I will mention one or two things. The Greene award cost, roughly, about 2s. 9d. a ton. Hon. Members will recall that under the Greene award there was not merely a national minimum of 83s. per adult underground worker and 78s. for surface workers, but also a flat rate increase of 2s. 6d. per shift for adults.
The guaranteed wage payable under the Essential Work Order 1941–43 costs about 2d. per ton. This is a separate item. Contributions towards miners' travelling expenses, allowances to miners returning from the Forces and from other industries, expenses of pit production committees, equal about one fifth of a penny per ton. The output bonus on the entire industry, based on the district principle, costs about ½d. a ton. The price allowance, designed to maintain the datum line credit balance of 1s. 9d. a ton, varies according to the district and at the present time amounts on an average to about 3s. 4d. on a ton of coal. I do not think my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan was quite right in the total he mentioned. The cost of that, as a separate thing, is about 4d. a ton. The Fund has to bear

certain deficits from past work, including making up the credit balance to the minimum of 1s. 6d., amounting for 1944 to about 1.2d. a ton. All these charges when they are added together—and believe me there is a large number of them—come at the moment to slightly under 8s. a ton and therefore it was necessary to increase this Coal Charges Order from 5s. to 8s. As I said earlier, it looks as if in the future we may have to increase it still more in order to pay the Porter award.
I am sure that, much as they would like it, my hon. Friends would not expect me to deal with the controversy surrounding the Porter award, but I think I am entitled to say that looking back to the time, 32 years ago, when this House of Commons refused to put 5s. a shift and 2s. for the boys into a Bill, looking to the fact that in 1912 about the highest minimum wage in any district in this country was about 6s. 9d. a shift for eight hours—but before you got that minimum wage of 6s. 9d. you had to work 80 per cent. of your time, you had to give a fair day's work, you had to get to your work when you could, you had to stop there until you had finished, all those qualifications were put in—all the controversy about the Porter award of £5 a week—

Mr. Sloan: You are discussing the Porter award.

Mr. Henry White: Would the Minister kindly remind the House that the average profit which the coalowners received was only about 4d. a ton at that particular time?

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: We cannot discuss the Porter award now.

Mr. Tom Smith: I was only showing that we have made a little progress.

Mr. R. J. Taylor: We are not opposing this: we are very anxious that the fund shall be administered properly and that there should be no exploitation. Apart from the financial consideration, I was staggered this week to learn that there were 213,000 shifts paid in a month out of this fund, which means that 213,000 men and boys were able and willing to work if work had been provided for them. If you put that into a five-shift week, it is equal to 43,000 men and boys, and it goes a very long way towards solving the man-power problem


in the pits. Therefore it seems to me that, entirely apart from the financial consideration, if an industry which has claimed the sole right to manage that industry cannot provide work for 213,000 men and boys in one month, then there is something radically wrong. We are balloting boys from universities and putting them into the pits, and it seems to me that we have a right to demand that our men, when they are fit and able and willing to work, should have work provided for them.

Mr. Smith: I would not like it to go out that the 213,000 shifts lost were traceable to abuses of the Fund.

Mr. Taylor: I did not say that.

Mr. Smith: We had a good deal of transport difficulty in November and December

Mr. Foster: These figures are for January.

Mr. Smith: I mean in December and January.

Mr. Sloan: My hon. Friend will have us all in the month of May before he is finished.

Mr. Smith: Many shifts were lost as the result of the shortage of wagons. There has been much discussion with regard to transport for conveying coal, and while on occasions miners are condemned for disputes it is only right to say that a good deal of coal has been lost because of the shortage of wagons and general lack of transport. As I have said, I would not like anybody to get the idea that the great bulk of these 213,000 shifts are traceable to abuses.

Mr. Taylor: I made no charges about abuses in regard to 213,000. I was very careful to say that apart from the financial considerations of this matter there was an output problem.

Mr. Tinker: There are two points I want to raise with my hon. Friend. In my locality, St. Helens, coal dealers have stated that the increase is 3s. 4d. a ton, while my hon. Friend has mentioned the figure of 3s. I quite understand why there should be even money, but I think it would be better if people

knew that they were being treated alike. My other point is with regard to lost shifts. If transport is bad what is to stop the coal being worked and stocked at convenient places, ready for filling into wagons? Coal on the surface can always quickly be attended to and I hope the Ministry will pay attention to that matter.

Mr. Smith: I can assure my hon. Friend that that has been done in some cases. The regional organisations and the Controller-General have been facing that matter. With regard to the 3s. that was the average. But the application of it in some cases has meant an increase of 2d. per cwt. It has not been a uniform amount. I think that generally the household price has increased by 2d. per cwt.

Mr. Sloan: The Ministry made sure of that.

Mr. Mathers: In answering the points raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Morpeth (Mr. R. J. Taylor) my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary said he hoped it would not be thought that all this money was paid out because of abuses of the Fund. He also said he hoped that that would not go forth from this House, but then he seemed to ride away on the railway wagons on the plea that there had been many transport difficulties. I know for a fact that there have been in many instances exaggerated claims made in respect of failure in the supply of wagons. I do not ask the Minister to reply now, but I ask that it shall not be supposed that anything like the great bulk of this expenditure is incurred because of shortage of railway wagons, and I ask whether it is possible for the Ministry to set out which are the losses due to transport.

Mr. Smith: I will look into it and let my hon. Friend know.

Mr. Fraser: My hon. Friend has said that the checking must go through the regional office. Does he not agree that the characteristics of a pit are only known by the men who work in the pit? A technician going a fortnight or a month after the stoppage would go down with the colliery manager and would not have the evidence before him as to whether it was necessary to send home 500 or 600 men. It seems obvious that the checking can only be done at the pit.

Mr. Smith: My hon. Friend has the wrong point. I was dealing with the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Foster) about money being used in development work for post-war purposes. It is only by going down the pit, and being competent to deal with what you see, that you can prove or disprove the allegation.

Mr. Fraser: Is it not good to know the pit you are going down?

Mr. Smith: Certainly.

Mr. Tom Brown: Is there any collaboration between the Ministry of Fuel and Power and the Ministry of War Transport? Two weeks ago instructions were issued by the Ministry of War Transport that they could not accept any more traffic owing to congestion between Manchester and London. If that congestion is known beforehand, some collaboration ought to take place to obviate additional congestion.

Mr. Deputy-Speaker: That does not arise.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Coal (Charges) (Amendment) (No. 1) Order, 1944, dated 31st January, 1944, made by the Treasury under Section 2 of the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act, 1939, a copy of which Order was presented to this House on 3rd February, be approved.

Orders of the Day — SUNDAY CINEMATOGRAPH ENTERTAINMENTS

Resolved,
That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, extending Section 1 of the Sunday Entertainments Art, 1932, to the County Borough of Sunderland, a copy of which was presented on 22nd February, be approved."—[Captain McEwen.]

Resolved,
That the Order made by the Secretary of State for the Home Department, extending Section 1 of the Sunday Entertainments Act, 1932, to the Parish of Pyle in the Rural District of Penybont, a copy of which was presented on 22nd February, be approved."—[Captain McEwen.]

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

ADJOURNMENT

Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Captain McEwen.]